Batata presently remarks that we have “arrived.” One takes his word for this. Still that verb does conditionally imply some place or spot of arrival. Here there was none—none, at least, that could be differentiated from any other point or spot in many circumambient leagues. But this was not an hour for philological disquisition, so we mentally decide that we have reached “nowhere.” A few hours later when daylight discovers our environment, that negation appears sufficiently proved. There are visible certain objects on the distant horizon. One—that behind us—proves to be the roof of the choza wherein we had spent the night—“hull-down” to the eastward. The others a lengthened scrutiny with prism-binoculars shows to be a trio of wild camels feeding knee-deep in water. Now where you see such signs you may conclude you are nowhere.
We skip a few hours, since we have no intention of inflicting on the reader the details of a morning’s flight-shooting. Suffice that at 9 A.M. B. reappears poling up in his punt, the spoils are collected (forty-nine in all, mostly wigeon and teal, with a few pintail and shoveler and one couple of gadwall), and the plan for the day discussed. To remain where we were (as this lucio had yesterday attracted a fairly continuous flight of ducks) had been our original idea. But a shift of the wind had rendered a second lucio, distant two miles, a more favourable resort for to-day, and thither accordingly we set out. Here a new puesto is promptly prepared and the forty-nine decoys deftly set out, each supported by a supple wand stuck in the mud below. Hardly had these preparations been completed, than the intermittent (or secondary) flight had commenced, file after file of ducks heading up from distant space, wheeling over or dashing past the seductive decoys. At recurring moments during the next three or four hours (with blank intervals between) I enjoyed to the full this most delightful form of wildfowling, so totally different in practice to all others.
Such is the speed of flighting fowl, such their keenness of vision and instant perception of danger, that but a momentary point of time—say the eighth of a second—is available fully to exploit each chance. Should the gunner rise too quick, the ducks are beyond the most effective range; yet within a space not to be measured by figures or words, they will have detected the fraud, and in a flash have scattered, shooting vertically upwards like a bunch of sky-rockets.
Two features in the life-history of the duck-kind become apparent. The first points to the probability that adults pair for life, and that the mated couples keep together all winter even when forming component units in a crowd. For when an adult female is shot from the midst of a pack, the male will almost invariably accompany her in her fall to the very surface of the water, and will afterwards circle around, piping disconsolately, and even return again and again in search of his lost partner. This applies chiefly to wigeon, but we have frequently observed the same trait in pintail and occasionally in other species. It is only the drakes that display this constancy; a bereaved female continues her flight unheeding.
The feature is most conspicuous when awaiting ducks at their feeding-grounds (comederos), but it also occurs when shooting on their flight-lines (correderos) between distant points.
The second singular habit is the custom, particularly among wigeon, to form what are termed in Spanish magañonas—little groups of four to a dozen birds consisting of a single female with a bevy of males in attendance, flying aimlessly hither and thither in a compact mass, the drakes constantly calling and the one female twisting and turning in all directions as though to avoid their attentions. The magañonas appear blind to all sense of danger, and will pass within easy range even though a gunner be fully exposed. Not only this, but a first shot may easily account for half-a-dozen, and should the hen be among the fallen, the survivors will come round again and again in search of her. We have known whole magañonas to be secured within a few minutes.
Other species also form magañonas, but more rarely and never in so conspicuous a manner as the wigeon. The habit certainly springs from what we have elsewhere termed a “pseudo-erotic” instinct (see Bird-life of the Borders, 2nd ed., pp. 208, 234-5), and is probably the first pairing of birds which have just then reached full maturity.
From mid-February to the end of March ducks are constantly departing northwards whenever conditions favour, to wit, a south-west wind in the afternoon, which wind is a feature of the season. Their vacant places are at once filled by an equally constant succession of arrivals from the south (Africa), easily recognised by rusty stains on their lower plumage (denoting ferruginous water) which they lose here within a few days.
Ducks at this season can find food everywhere in the manzanilla, or camomile, which now grows up from the bottom and in places covers the shallows with its white, buttercup-like flowers. Having food everywhere there is less necessity to fly in search of it. It is, however, a curious feature of the season that, after the morning-flight (which is shorter than in mid-winter), ducks practically suspend all movement from, say, 8 A.M. till the daily sea-breeze (Viento de la mar) springs up about 1 P.M. During these five hours not a wing moves, but no sooner has the sea-breeze set in than constant streams of ducks fly in successive detachments from the large open lucios to the shallower feeding-grounds. Thus we have known a late February “bag,” which at 2 P.M. had numbered but a miserable half-score, mount up before dusk to little short of a hundred.
Wigeon arrive from the end of September onwards, the great influx occurring during the first fortnight of November. They commence leaving from mid-February, and by the end of March all (save a few belated stragglers) are gone.