One afternoon in the early part of July, 1872—a period when Andalucia was seething with revolution and communistic ideas—a young Golden Eagle was brought in by José Larrios, a man we often employed in sport and country campaigns—the same José whose dare-devil escapade with a bull we have already related (see p. 10). This eaglet he had brought from the Sierra de Alcalá de los Gazules, nearly forty miles distant, where his brothers held a small mountain-farm; and there remained, he said, another fledgeling in the eyrie. The writer, in those early days, had not succeeded in shooting the Royal Eagle, and the ambition to do so was intense, despite the difficulty of the communists. Two days before we had returned from a fortnight's expedition to the westward, and when riding towards Jerez were stopped by a military cordon who invested the town and demanded our credentials. These being satisfactory, the officer in command informed us that street-fighting was taking place, and detained us till evening, when he kindly furnished us with an escort. We found that two days previously the city had been seized by an armed mob, thousands strong, who by a sudden coup had gained possession of the public buildings and barricaded the streets. On the arrival of a troop of cavalry from Seville the mutineers incontinently fled, save a mere handful of the bolder spirits, who stood to their improvised defences to the last, and were finally shot down within the church of San Juan, wherein they had sought refuge. This revolution thus crumbled to nothing, though at one time it threatened to exceed in violence that of three years before (1869), when the barricades were taken at the point of the bayonet, and hundreds of insurgents were shot down in the streets of Jerez.
For the moment danger was past, and the city, within the armed cordon, restored to normal condition, though outside the state of the adjacent country was not certain. Keenness to kill the Royal Eagle of the sierras was paramount, and at midnight José and I set out from La Compañia, the old Jesuit convent which was then our home, and traversing the dark streets and narrow, sandy lanes beyond, we were soon clear of the town, and by daylight had reached the ford of the Alamillo, where we crossed the Guadalete, and were breakfasting at 6.30 in the hill-village of Paterna—five leagues. Early in the afternoon we completed the twelve leagues and reached the little cortijo of Jautor, the abode of José's two brothers, who agreed to take us to the eagle's nest that evening. Jautor is surrounded by towering sierras, and we proceeded on foot up a rough goat-track, choked with strong brushwood, and leading up the steep southern acclivity. After climbing and walking about two hours, we reached the nest, a huge pile of sticks surmounting an oak-tree which hung over a deep garganta or mountain-ravine. What was my vexation to find, after eighteen hours' labour, that it was empty! On one side lay part of the leg of a kid, and about half a hare, both quite fresh, but the eaglet was gone; and though we waited till dusk on the chance of the old bird returning, we saw nothing, and had to retrace our weary steps, sticking and stumbling in the dark, to the shepherds' hut, deadbeat and disappointed.
The choza was a mere hut built of long cañas or reeds, in the form of an extinguisher, the interior being circular, some 15ft. in diameter, occupied by many goats, poultry, and cats—not to mention minor inhabitants, and with a wood fire smouldering in the centre. I had hardly coiled myself in my rug and laid down to sleep on the low mud settee which ran round the back of the den, when a furious outburst of barking took place among the numerous dogs which lay sleeping round the fire. The goatherd opened the door, and there entered an old man, bronze-visaged and wiry, leading behind him a donkey. He was a smuggler, and his packs, crammed with contraband of infinite variety, were soon deposited on the floor, and the donkey hobbled and turned out to find bed and breakfast where it might. Then the cerrones were unpacked, and their multifarious contents displayed on the mud floor—pins, needles and scissors, buttons, and bobbins of thread, tobacco, tape, and sundry kinds of coloured cloth and bright ribbons. The latter at once "fetched" the feminine portion of the community—alas! for the chances of sleep for the weary—female nature is everywhere the same, even in the choza of a goatherd buried amidst these lonely sierras, and bargaining and chatter continued well-nigh throughout the livelong night.
The simple peasants, though unable to comprehend my object, were sincerely distressed at our failure; and next morning, while we were busy cooking our breakfast under the shade of a spreading laurestinus, came to say there was another eagle's nest on the opposite side of the valley. They had kindly sent a lad at daybreak to make inquiries at a neighbouring farm, four miles distant. Thither accordingly we set out, riding for several miles till the ascent became so abrupt, and intercepted with brushwood, that it was necessary to picket the horses, leaving them in charge of a lad, and to proceed on foot. We crossed the ridge of the sierra and entered an upland valley beyond, where, in a tall poplar, standing slightly apart, was a rather small nest containing a single eaglet. I must have fallen asleep at my post, for presently José, who had left me in ambush, aroused me to say that the eagle had returned, fed her young, and departed! While we were talking the female flew overhead, and instantly catching sight of us, with a scream dropped a rabbit she was carrying, and soared heavenwards. My shot dropped her stone-dead, and she fell within a few yards of her victim—a female of the Serpent-Eagle, a species well known on the wooded plains, but which we had hardly expected to find in the mountains. We have related this incident because there followed one of the most singular occurrences that have happened within our ornithological experiences. On being skinned, this eagle was found to contain the almost entire remains of a young eagle, which, from its feathered tarsi and general appearance, was certainly a nestling Golden Eagle—the counterpart, perhaps the brother, of the one José had already brought alive to Jerez! We can only state the bare fact, as above, and surmise that the youngster was yesterday the occupant of the eyrie we had travelled so far to despoil, and that the actual and would-be destroyers had thus accidentally come in collision.
About a league further the valley terminated in a fine amphitheatre of crags, showing remarkably bold and abrupt escarpments. The highest part was occupied by a colony of Griffons, and while resting for an hour or so in a niche of this mountain rampart, I shot four of the great birds. Collectively they measured across the expanded wings some thirty-eight feet, and though we had no means of weighing them, estimated them at about forty pounds apiece. One of the vultures shot here, a fine bird with bushy white frill, the peasants asserted to be between 300 and 400 years old, though how they could tell is a mystery. This bird was killed with ball on the wing. The smell of Griffon Vultures when shot is strong and most offensive: their claws and long feathers are always much abraded by attrition on the rocks, and their whole plumage has a worn and faded appearance, in harmony with the decay and death in which they rejoice.
The young vultures were at last (July 8th) on the wing, having spent some three months in the nests:[45] they are now of a clear, bright cinnamon colour, much handsomer than the adults, each feather being shaded; and one shot to-day measured between eight and nine feet in expanse of wing.
Our lofty perch commanded a grand mountain landscape—sierras extending range beyond range in swelling stony masses or jagged sky-lines. Alpine Swifts dashed overhead; Blackchats and Blue Rock-Thrushes flitted among the crags, and, with the great vultures soaring above and below, afforded some interesting scenes. The mid-day heat was intense, and we had a rough tramp down to the horses through broken ground and thick young wood, where we disturbed a Roe and saw many traces of others. It was after dark when we reached a miserable wayside venta, where, alongside half a dozen snoring peasants and tormented by a million fleas, we passed the night on the ground.
Returning homewards next morning, while we were passing through the outlying spurs or foothills of the sierra, a pair of large dark eagles were observed hunting a scrub-covered ridge. The larger of the two presently swept down upon an unlucky rabbit and forthwith commenced to devour it, the male perching on a stump hard by. They were favourably situate for a stalk, and by riding round in a wide circuit I gained the reverse of the ridge. On creeping forward to my marks, however, I could at first see nothing—only a few palmetto bushes some distance down the slope. Having crawled to these, I perceived the eagle busily tearing up her prey in a slight hollow of the ground. She was only forty yards away, yet the sitting shot (broadside on) produced no effect. A "green wire-cartridge, No. 1" from the left, broke a wing as she rose, and, after some little trouble, she was secured. She proved to be a Bonelli's Eagle (Aquila bonellii), a perfect adult specimen, dark brown above, with white breast boldly streaked and splashed with black: the bushy "stockings" and warm reddish-brown tarsi contrasting with the long white "apron" which overlapped them. (See photo.)