The width of the lagoon would barely exceed half-a-mile; its shores all furrowed by wild boar in their search for grillos, or mole-crickets, and dotted with the skeletons of water-tortoises, and beyond its glancing waters rolled stretches of grey scrub and heath, backed in the distance by sand-dunes and corrales, the outliers of the desolate arenales that extend to the sea-coast. Beneath a straggling belt of pines there were sheltering from the mid-day heat a group of wild-bred cattle; and a little apart stood three or four big bulls of the fighting breed:—formidable beasts that demand a wide berth. More shaggy cattle, knee-deep in water, were dreamily ruminating, each form surmounted by a white bird, the Buff-backed Heron—in Spanish Agarrapatosa or tick-eater—some apparently asleep, others busily searching for prey. Nearer still, among the islanded patches of sedge and carices, stalked a pair of Little Egrets, their long, thin necks arched with infinite grace, and heads poised to strike with deadly precision any darting larvæ or water-beetle they detect among the floating weeds.
The heron-tribe is strongly represented in Andalucia; in spring and summer almost every European form adorns these remote and marshy regions. During May the Buff-backed Herons were flying all over the plains in packs of a score to fifty or more, apparently in quest of a settlement; the pretty little Squacco Herons had then shifted their quarters from the marisma to the rushy lagoons, and many nests were ready for eggs in the juncales; but all this group breed late, none laying much before June.
Since we first visited these regions, now nearly twenty years ago, a sad diminution has taken place in the numbers of these beautiful Herons and Egrets, due in great measure to the cruel and thoughtless fashion of wearing their plumes in ladies' hats. Let ladies humanely remember that these plumes are only attained in the nesting season, when to kill the male means the sacrifice of a whole family. Fortunately there remain sequestered nooks, sacred as yet to wild nature. Both in the neighbourhood of Almonte and in certain marshy regions of vast cane-brake and wooded swamp on the Estremenian border, there survive unknown and unmolested colonies of these graceful creatures, where for many a year to come the Egrets, Buff-backed and Squacco Herons, the Night-Heron and Little Bittern, Spoonbill, Glossy Ibis and other "rare birds" may yet find a sanctuary protected by natural fastnesses, and by legions of leeches and mosquitoes that render human life well nigh intolerable. The very toads are there as big as small footstools; the natives yellow and sunken-eyed, with hollow cheeks and parchment skin.
Here, when summer-heats provoke miasma and fetid airs, languor-laden, from the morass, the herons congregate. In June their slight nests crowd the sallow-brakes and clumps of gnarled alders and aspens islanded in marsh, and barricaded with bramble and vicious thorny zarzas. Amidst umbrageous gloom the Night-Heron and Bittern dream away the hours of daylight, the former among the branches, the latter in thickest sedge. The Bittern lays its pheasant-like eggs in April, often in March; the Little Bittern not till June. It is difficult to fix a date for the rest—so uncertain are they, and so dependent on the seasons and the quantity of water in the marismas. We have eggs of the Night-Heron taken as early as May 20th—another year none were laid till June 8th. From this latter date onwards is perhaps the average time for eggs of that species, as well as those of the Egret, Buff-back, and Squacco Herons, and the Little Bittern.
So retiring are the nocturnal species that it is difficult to flush them without a dog; yet they cannot compare, in this respect, with their neighbours, the Crakes and Rails, which also abound in the Spanish morass—the Water-Rail and Spotted Crake most numerous, Baillon's Crake rather less so, and the Little Crake the scarcest. All these are pointed and 'roded' keenly by native dogs, but their skulking powers are a match for the staunchest. Mataperros—"kill-dogs"—is their Spanish nickname, their thin, curiously compressed bodies resembling in section that of one's hand held vertically, enabling them to glide like rats through the thickest growth of flags and aquatic herbage.
The nests of all the Rails are hard to find; but to identify the precise owner of each is a thousand-fold harder. Nests and eggs of all being closely alike, an unidentified clutch is worthless; but the man who can work this out knee-deep amidst mud and stagnant water, under a broiling sun, has patience that nothing can withstand, nor any obstacle resist.
During May a clamorous element is added to the bird-life of these lagoons by the nesting-colonies of Terns, which hover round the intruder, filling the air with their harsh vociferations. Santolalla is a stronghold of the Whiskered and Black Terns (H. hybrida and H. fissipes) whose nests are built on the water-lilies and floating water-weeds. There are other large colonies in the open marisma, where the Gull-billed and the Lesser Terns also nest, the former in some numbers.
