One circumstance deserves passing remark—the relatively smaller number of eggs laid in the south than is the case with many of the same species further north. In Spain, several of the warblers, &c. above mentioned, lay only four eggs; the Blackbird, as a rule, but three, and these much brighter coloured than at home.
Delightful days were those spent riding through these pathless forests, redolent of the exhalations of pine and rosemary, and a hundred aromatic shrubs, and resplendent with the glory of the southern spring-time. What words can convey the contrast of dark pinal and dazzling sand-waste, or catch the play of sunlight glancing through massed foliage on russet trunks and the soft pale verdure of the brushwood? For long leagues these forests stretch unbroken save by rushy glades and park-like opens, where at dusk the Red Deer come to seek rich pasturage, and the Wild Boar ploughs deep trenches in his search for succulent roots, varied by a bonne-bouche of mole-crickets.
CHAPTER XXI.
BIRD-LIFE OF THE SPANISH SPRING-TIME.
II.—The Cistus-Plains and Prairies.
Leaving the pinal, or pine region, let us spend a fortnight in the open bush-land beyond. Passing successively the famous manchas of the Alameda Honda, the Rincon de los Carrizos, and Majáda Real—each coverts of repute, though all unknown to geographers and marked upon no map—we traverse next the forest-glades of the Angosturas, and enter upon a different region, where fresh landscapes and new beauties await appreciative eyes. Here the swelling sand-dunes trend away southwards—towards the sea. The dark bushy pine gives place to open heath and brushwood, stretching away to the horizon, here and there diversified with scattered clumps of cork-oak, aspen, wild-olive, and poplar.
The country around our quarters is a level plain of evergreen scrub—lentiscus, broom, heaths of varied kinds, and mile upon mile of sombre grey-green cistus, generally about shoulder-high, but deepening in places into impassable jungle. Here and there are stagnant pools, around whose banks grow immense cork-oaks, embedded amidst tree-heath (Erica arborea), giant heather and arbutus, all interlaced with the twining, thorny fronds of briar. It is in these dank, dark depths that the old boars select their lairs, and they are the home of Lynx and Wild-Cat, Badger, Genet, and Mongoose, and of many interesting birds, from the Eagle to the Turtledove. The following record of some of our spring rambles will give an outline of the fauna of this region:—
April 15th.—We were astir early, a few stars shining dimly, and the last of the frogs still croaking in the acequias, as we sipped our matutinal chocolate upon the verandah;
βρεκεκεκἑ κοἁξ κοἁξ, βρεκεκεκἑ κοἁξ κοἁξ, |
repeat the frogs, as in the Stygian chorus of old. Far away over the half-lit expanse of cistus a pair of large eagles were already hunting for their breakfast, and an owl slipped close overhead and disappeared into a crevice of the roof above, where we could hear the snoring and snapping of the strigine community as the night's booty was being discussed. We were away by sunrise, at which hour the singular, resonant song of the Partridge-cocks (Red-legs) was ubiquitous: from almost every ilex-grove came the half-choking chukàr, chukàr, while the love-sick bird bowed and gesticulated, standing nearly bolt upright with half-expanded wings on some dead branch or shattered trunk, sometimes on the crest of a sand-ridge.[53]