This morning, however, the greylags flew wide and scattered, in strange contrast with their customary regularity. We noticed the change, but knew not the cause. The geese did. The barometer during the night (unnoticed by us at 4 A.M.) had gone down half an inch, and already, as we assembled for breakfast at ten o’clock, rain was beginning to fall—the first rain since the spring! The wind, which for weeks had remained “nailed to the North—norte clavado,” in Spanish phrase—flew to all airts, and a change was at hand. By eleven there burst what the Spanish well name a tormenta; lightning flashed from a darkened sky, while thunder rolled overhead, and rain drove horizontal on a living hurricane. An hour later the heavens cleared, and the sun was shining as before. That short and sudden storm, however, had marked an epoch. The whole conditions of bird-life in the marisma had been revolutionised within a couple of hours.
In other years, under such conditions as this morning had promised, we have records of sixty and eighty greylags brought to bag, and it was with such anticipation that we had set out to-day. The result totalled but a quarter of such numbers.
Ducks came next in our programme, and the writer, being the last gun by lot, had several miles to ride to his remote post at El Hondón. The scenes in bird-life through which we rode amazed even accustomed eyes. At intervals as we advanced across mud-flats clad in low growth of rush and samphire, rose for a mile across our front such crowds of wigeon and teal that the landscape ahead appeared a quivering horizon of wings that shimmered like a heat-haze.
Crouching behind a low breastwork, before me lay a five-acre pool which no amount of firing ever kept quite clear of swimming forms, so fast did thirsty duck, teal, and geese keep dropping in, since behind for twenty leagues stretched waterless plain.
Merely to make a bag under such conditions means taking every chance, firing away till barrels grow too hot to hold. Here, however, that nature-love that overrides even a fowler’s keenness stepped in. With half the wildfowl of Europe flashing, wheeling, and alighting within view—many, one fondly imagined, likely to be of supreme interest—the writer cannot personally go on taking single mallards, teal, or wigeon, one after another in superb but almost monotonous rapidity. For the moment, in fact, the naturalist supplants the gunner. True, this may be sacrificing the mutton to the shadow, and this afternoon no special prize rewarded self-denial in letting pass many a tempting chance.
For gratifying indeed to fowler’s pride it is to pull down in falling heap the smart pintails and brilliant shovelers, to bring off a right-and-left at geese, though, it may be, one had first to let a cloud of wigeon pass the silent muzzle. Such is individual taste, nor will the memory of that afternoon ever fade, although my score, when at 3.30 P.M. I was recalled, only totalled up to seventy-four ducks and four greylag geese.
The recall was imperative, and I obeyed, though not without hesitation and doubt. Could earth provide a better place? “Yes,” replies Vasquez, “in one hour the geese will be streaming in clouds up the Algaidilla and Caño Juncero. Come! there’s no time to lose.” Within an hour we had reached the spot. The water was four inches deep, with low cover of rushes. The revolving stool stood too high, so I knelt in the shallow, and within three minutes the first squad of geese came in quite straight. One I took kneeling, but had to jump for the second. Just as No. 2 collapsed, No. 1 caught me full amidships, knocking me sidelong and, rebounding, upset the stool and the bag of cartridges thereon! A nice mess, occurring at the very outset of one of those ambrosial half-hours seldom realised outside of dreams. Quickly I dried the cartridges as well as circumstances would admit, for pack after pack of geese hurled themselves gaggling and honking right in my face, and during the few brief minutes of the southern twilight, I reckoned I had twenty-three down—seven right-and-lefts—though in the darkness only seventeen could be gathered, the winged all necessarily escaping.
