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UNEXPLORED SPAIN
UNEXPLORED SPAIN
BY ABEL CHAPMAN AUTHOR OF ‘WILD SPAIN,’ ‘WILD NORWAY,’ ‘ON SAFARI,’ ETC. AND WALTER J. BUCK BRITISH VICE-CONSUL AT JEREZ AUTHOR OF ‘WILD SPAIN’ WITH 209 ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH CRAWHALL, E. CALDWELL, AND ABEL CHAPMAN AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD 1910 INSCRIBED BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION TO THEIR MAJESTIES KING ALFONSO XIII. HIMSELF AN ACCOMPLISHED SPORTSMAN AND QUEEN VICTORIA EUGENIA OF SPAIN WITH DEEP RESPECT BY THEIR MAJESTIES’ GRATEFUL AND DE
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Preface
Preface
T HE undertaking of a sequel to Wild Spain , we are warned, is dangerous. The implication gratifies, but the forecast alarms not. Admittedly, in the first instance, we occupied a virgin field, and naturally the almost boyish enthusiasm that characterised the earlier book—and probably assured its success—has in some degree abated. But it’s not all gone yet; and any such lack is compensated by longer experience (an aggregate, between us, of eighty years) of a land we love, and the sounder apprecia
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CHAPTER I UNEXPLORED SPAIN INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I UNEXPLORED SPAIN INTRODUCTORY
T HE Spain that we love and of which we write is not the Spain of tourist or globe-trotter. These hold main routes, the highways from city to city; few so much as venture upon the bye-ways. Our Spain begins where bye-ways end. We write of her pathless solitudes, of desolate steppe and prairie, of marsh and mountain-land—of her majestic sierras, some well-nigh inaccessible, and, in many an instance, untrodden by British foot save our own. Lonely scenes these, yet glorified by primeval beauty and
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CHAPTER II UNEXPLORED SPAIN (Continued) ON TRAVEL AND OTHER THINGS
CHAPTER II UNEXPLORED SPAIN (Continued) ON TRAVEL AND OTHER THINGS
T RAVEL in all the wilder regions of Spain implies the saddle. Our Spain begins, as premised, where roads end. For us railways exist merely to help us one degree nearer to the final plunge into the unknown; and not railways only, but roads and bridges soon “petter out” into trackless waste, and leave the explorer face to face with open wilds— despoblados , that is, uninhabited regions—with a route-map in his pocket that is quite unreliable, and a trusty local guide who is just the reverse. Ridin
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CHAPTER III THE COTO DOÑANA: OUR HISTORIC HUNTING-GROUND
CHAPTER III THE COTO DOÑANA: OUR HISTORIC HUNTING-GROUND
A Foreword by Sir Maurice de Bunsen , G.C.M.G., British Ambassador at Madrid. A mong my recollections of Spain none will be more vivid and delightful than those of my visits to the Coto Doñana. From beginning to end, climate, scenery, sport, and hospitable entertainment combine, in that happy region, to make the hours all too short for the joys they bring. Equipped with Paradox-gun or rifle, and some variety of ammunition, to suit the shifting requirements of deer and boar, lynx, partridge, wild
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CHAPTER IV THE COTO DOÑANA NOTES ON ITS PHYSICAL FORMATION, FAUNA, AND RED DEER
CHAPTER IV THE COTO DOÑANA NOTES ON ITS PHYSICAL FORMATION, FAUNA, AND RED DEER
T HE great river Guadalquivir, dividing in its oblique course seawards into double channels and finally swerving, as though reluctant to lose all identity in the infinite Atlantic, practically cuts off from the Spanish mainland a triangular region, some forty miles of waste and wilderness, an isolated desert, singular as it is beautiful, which we now endeavour to describe. This, from our having for many years held the rights of chase, we can at least undertake with knowledge and affection. Its p
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CHAPTER V ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME STILL-HUNTING (RED DEER)
CHAPTER V ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME STILL-HUNTING (RED DEER)
T HE line of least resistance represents twentieth-century ideals—maximum results for the minimum of labour or technical skill. In the field of sport, wherever available, universal “driving” supersedes the arts of earlier venery—the pride of past generations. In Spain, more leisurely while no less dignified, there survive in sport, as in other matters, practices more consonant with the dash and chivalry popularly ascribed to her national character. Such, for example, is the attack, single-handed
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CHAPTER VI ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME (Continued) WILD-BOAR
CHAPTER VI ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME (Continued) WILD-BOAR
F ROM one’s earliest days the wild-boar has been invested with a sort of halo of romance, identified in youthful mind with grim courage and brute strength. Perhaps his grisly front, the vicious bloodshot eyes, savage snorts, and generally malignant demeanour, lend substance to such idea. But even among adults there exists in the popular mind a strange mixture of misconception as between big game and dangerous game—to hundreds the terms are synonymous. Thus a lady, inspecting our trophies, exclai
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CHAPTER VII “OUR LADY OF THE DEW” THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE OF NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL ROCÍO
CHAPTER VII “OUR LADY OF THE DEW” THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE OF NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL ROCÍO
P ILGRIMAGES by the pious to distant shrines are a well-known phase in the faith both of the Moslem and of the Romish Church, and require no definition by us; but one that is yearly performed to a tiny and isolated shrine not a dozen miles from our shooting-lodge of Doñana deserves description. First as to its origin. Twelve hundred years ago when Arab conquerors overran Spain much treasure of the churches, with many sacred emblems, relics, etc., were hurriedly concealed in places of safety. But
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CHAPTER VIII THE MARISMAS OF GUADALQUIVÍR THE DELTA
CHAPTER VIII THE MARISMAS OF GUADALQUIVÍR THE DELTA
F ROM Seville to the Atlantic the great river Guadalquivír pursues its course through seventy miles of alluvial mud-flats entirely of its own construction. The whole of this viewless waste (in winter largely submerged) is technically termed the marisma; but its upper regions, slightly higher-lying, have proved amenable to a limited dominion of man, and nowadays comprise (besides some rich corn-lands) broad pasturages devoted to grazing, and which yield Toros bravos , that is, fighting-bulls of b
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CHAPTER IX WILDFOWL-SHOOTING IN THE MARISMA ITS PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE
CHAPTER IX WILDFOWL-SHOOTING IN THE MARISMA ITS PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE
V AST as their aggregations may be, yet wildfowl do not necessarily—merely by virtue of numbers—afford any sort of certainty to the modern fowler. Half-a-million may be in view day by day, but in situations or under conditions where scarce half-a-score can be killed. This elementary feature is never appreciated by the uninitiated, nor probably ever will be since Hawker’s terse and trenchant prologue failed to fix it. [19] What “the Colonel” wrote a century ago stands equally good to-day; and mut
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CHAPTER X WILD-GEESE IN SPAIN THEIR SPECIES, HAUNTS, AND HABITS
CHAPTER X WILD-GEESE IN SPAIN THEIR SPECIES, HAUNTS, AND HABITS
T O Spain, as to other lands that remain unaltered and “unimproved,” resort the greylag geese in thousands to pass the winter. In our marismas of the Guadalquivir they appear during the last days of September, but it is a month later ere their full numbers are made up, and from that date until the end of February their defiant multitudes and the splendid difficulties of their pursuit afford a unique form and degree of wild sport perhaps unknown outside of Spain. Ride through the marisma in Novem
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CHAPTER XI WILD-GEESE ON THE SAND-HILLS
CHAPTER XI WILD-GEESE ON THE SAND-HILLS
F LANKING the marisma and separating it from the dry lands of Doñana, there rises rampart-like a swelling range of dunes—the biggest thing in the sand line we have seen on earth. For miles extend these mountains of sand, unbroken by vestige of vegetation or any object to relieve one’s eyesight, dazzled—aye, blinded—by that brilliantly scintillating surface, set off in vivid contrast by the azure vault above. Should a stranger, on first seeing those buttressed dunes, be seriously informed that th
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CHAPTER XII SOME RECORDS IN SPANISH WILDFOWLING
CHAPTER XII SOME RECORDS IN SPANISH WILDFOWLING
E L T RAVIERSO , February 9, 1901. —An hour before dawn we (five guns) lay echeloned obliquely across a mile of water, the writer’s position being the second out. No. 1 squatted (in six inches of water) between me and the shore; but, being dissatisfied, moved elsewhere shortly after day-break, leaving with me two geese and about a dozen ducks. These, with thirty-six of my own, I set out as decoys. Shortly thereafter I heard the gaggle of geese, and two, coming from behind, were already so near t
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CHAPTER XIII THE SPANISH IBEX
CHAPTER XIII THE SPANISH IBEX
I N the Spanish ibex Spain possesses not only a species peculiar to the Peninsula, but a game-animal of the first rank. Fortunate it is that this sentence can be written in the present tense instead of (as but a few years ago appeared probable) in the past. Since we first wrote on this subject in 1893 the Spanish ibex has passed through a crisis that came perilously near extirpation. Up to the date named, and for several years later, none of the great landowners of Spain, within whose titles wer
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CHAPTER XIV SIERRA MORÉNA IBEX
CHAPTER XIV SIERRA MORÉNA IBEX
T HE tourist speeding along the Andalucian railways and surveying from his carriage-window the olive-clad and altogether mild-looking slopes of the Sierra Moréna, will form no adequate, much less a romantic, conception of that great mountain-system of which he sees but the southern fringe. Yet, in fact, the train hurries him past within a few leagues of perhaps the finest big-game country in Spain—of mountain-solitudes and a thousand jungled corries, wherein lurk fierce wolves and giant boars, t
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CHAPTER XV SIERRA MORÉNA (Continued) RED DEER AND BOAR
CHAPTER XV SIERRA MORÉNA (Continued) RED DEER AND BOAR
T HE mountain deer of the Sierra Moréna are the grandest of their kind in Spain, and will compare favourably with any truly wild deer in Europe. [27] The drawings, photographs, and measurements given in this chapter prove so much, but no mere numerals convey an adequate conception of these magnificent harts, as seen in the full glory of life bounding in unequal leaps over some rocky pass, or picking more deliberate course up a stone stairway. Massive as they are in body (weighing, say, 300 lbs.
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CHAPTER XVI PERNÁLES
CHAPTER XVI PERNÁLES
A COUNTRY better adapted by nature for the success of the enterprising bandit cannot be conceived. The vast despoblados = uninhabited wastes, with scant villages far isolated and lonely mountain-tracts where a single desperado commands the way and can hold-up a score of passers-by, all lend themselves admirably to this peculiar form of industry. And up to quite recent years these natural advantages were exploited to the full. Riding through the sierras, one notes rude crosses and epitaphs inscri
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CHAPTER XVII LA MANCHA THE LAGOONS OF DAIMIEL
CHAPTER XVII LA MANCHA THE LAGOONS OF DAIMIEL
I MMEDIATELY to the north of our “Home-Province” of Andalucia, but separated therefrom by the Sierra Moréna, stretch away the uplands of La Mancha—the country of Don Quixote. The north-bound traveller, ascending through the rock-gorges of Despeñaperros, thereat quits the mountains and enters on the Manchegan plateau. A more dreary waste, ugly and desolate, can scarce be imagined. Were testimony wanting to the compelling genius of Cervantes, in very truth La Mancha itself would yield it. Yet it i
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CHAPTER XVIII THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHT ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER XVIII THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHT ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
P ERHAPS no other contemporary spectacle has been oftener and more minutely described by writers who—censors and enthusiasts alike—possess neither personal nor technical qualification, for the work. Impressions, once the Pyrenees are passed, grow spontaneously deeper and stronger in inverse ratio with experiences. And the majority of descriptions confessedly prejudge the scene in adverse sense—the writer (sometimes a lady) going into wild hysterics after half-seeing a single bull killed. We have
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CHAPTER XIX THE SPANISH FIGHTING-BULL HIS BREEDING AND TRAINING
CHAPTER XIX THE SPANISH FIGHTING-BULL HIS BREEDING AND TRAINING
T HE normal British idea of a bull naturally derives colour from those stolid animals one sees at home, some with a ring through the nose, and which are only kept for stud purposes, but occasionally evince a latent ferocity by goring to death some hapless herdsman. Between such and the Spanish Toro de Plaza there exists no sort of analogy. The Spanish fighting-bull is bred to fight, and the keen experience of centuries is brought to bear on the selection of the fittest—that, moreover, not only a
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CHAPTER XX SIERRA DE GRÉDOS
CHAPTER XX SIERRA DE GRÉDOS
W E met, our trio, on the platform of Charing Cross—not classic but perhaps historic ground, since so many notable expeditions have started therefrom, with others of less importance. The heat in Madrid towards the end of August (1896) was not excessive—less than we had feared. We enjoyed, that Sunday, quite an excellent bull-fight, although the bulls themselves had been advertised as of “only one horn” apiece ( de un cuerno ). There was no sign, however, of any cornual deficiency as each magnifi
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CHAPTER XXI SIERRA DE GRÉDOS (Continued) IBEX-HUNTING
CHAPTER XXI SIERRA DE GRÉDOS (Continued) IBEX-HUNTING
W HY try to describe the distress of that morning or the efforts it cost, during fourteen hours, to gain the summits of Grédos? Again and again what we had taken for our destination proved to be some intervening ridge with another desperate gorge beyond. Suffice it that it was an hour after dark ere we finally lifted the cargoes from the dead-beat beasts. Presently the moon arose, and against her pale effulgence towered the gnarled and pinnacled peaks of Almanzór, piercing the very skies—a lovel
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CHAPTER XXII AN ABANDONED PROVINCE (ESTREMADURA)
CHAPTER XXII AN ABANDONED PROVINCE (ESTREMADURA)
C AN this really be Europe—crowded Europe? For four long days we have traversed Estremenian wilds, and during that time have scarce met a score of folk, nor seen serious evidence of effective human occupation. At first our northward way led through rolling undulations, the western foothills of the long Sierra Moréna, clad with the everlasting gum-cistus, with euonymus, a few stunted trees, and the usual aromatic brushwood of the south. Only at long intervals—say a league or two apart—would some
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CHAPTER XXIII LAS HURDES (ESTREMADURA) AND THE SAVAGE TRIBES THAT INHABIT THEM
CHAPTER XXIII LAS HURDES (ESTREMADURA) AND THE SAVAGE TRIBES THAT INHABIT THEM
I SOLATED amidst the congeries of mountain-ranges that converge upon León, Castile, and Estremadura, lies a lost region that bears this name. The Hurdes occupy no small space; they represent no insignificant nook, but a fair-sized province—say fifty miles long by thirty broad—severed from the outer world; cut off from Portugal on the one side, from Spain on the other; while its miserable inhabitants are ignored and despised by both its neighbours. SKETCH-MAP OF LAS HURDES SKETCH-MAP OF LAS HURDE
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CHAPTER XXIV THE GREAT BUSTARD
CHAPTER XXIV THE GREAT BUSTARD
O VER the vast expanse of those silent solitudes, the corn-growing steppes of Spain—all but abandoned by human denizens—this grandest and most majestic of European game-birds forms the chief ornament. When the sprouting grain grows green in spring, stretching from horizon to horizon, you may form his acquaintance to best advantage. And among the things of sport are few more attractive scenes than a band of great bustards at rest. Bring your field-glass to bear on the gathering which you see yond
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CHAPTER XXV THE GREAT BUSTARD (Continued)
CHAPTER XXV THE GREAT BUSTARD (Continued)
T HE following illustrates in outline a day’s bustard-shooting and incidentally shows how strongly haunted these birds are, each pack to its own particular locality. On reaching our point (a seventeen-kilometres’ drive), the scouts sent out the day before reported three bands numbering roughly forty, forty, and sixteen—in all nearly a hundred birds. The nearest lot was to the west. These we found easily, and B. F. B. got a brace, right-and-left, without incident. Riding back eastwards, the secon
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CHAPTER XXVI FLAMINGOES THE QUEST FOR THEIR “INCUNABULA”
CHAPTER XXVI FLAMINGOES THE QUEST FOR THEIR “INCUNABULA”
T HE flamingo stands in a class apart. Allied to no other bird-form—hardly so much as related—it may be regarded almost as a separate act of creation. Its nesting habits, and the method by which a bird of such abnormal build could incubate its eggs, formed for generations a “vexed question” in bird-life. The story of the efforts made by British naturalists to solve the problem ranks among the classics of ornithology. The marismas of Guadalquivir were early known to be one of the few European inc
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CHAPTER XXVII WILD CAMELS
CHAPTER XXVII WILD CAMELS
I T was during these aquatic rides in search of the nesting-places of the flamingo that we first fell in with wild camels. Vague yarns, more or less circumstantial, that such animals wandered over the farther marismas, we remember as early as 1872. The thing, however, had appeared too incredible for consideration—at any rate, we gave it none. But in that spring of 1883 we one day found ourselves face to face with two unmistakable camels. They stood gazing intently about half a mile away—a huge,
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CHAPTER XXVIII AFTER CHAMOIS IN THE ASTURIAS PICOS DE EUROPA
CHAPTER XXVIII AFTER CHAMOIS IN THE ASTURIAS PICOS DE EUROPA
A T the château of Nuévos, hidden away amidst Cantabrian hills, hard by where the “Picos de Europa” form the most prominent feature of that 100-mile range, we were welcomed by the Conde de la Vega de Sella, whom we had met the previous year in Norway, and his friend Bernaldo de Quirós. Our host was a bachelor and the menage curiously mixed; there was a wild Mexican-Indian servant, but more alarming still, a tame wolf prowled free about the house—none too tame either, as testified by a half-heale
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CHAPTER XXIX HIGHLANDS OF ASTURIAS
CHAPTER XXIX HIGHLANDS OF ASTURIAS
(1) THE TROUT IN SPAIN T HE Asturian Highlands—a maze of mist-wreathed mountains forested with birch and pine, the home of brown bear and capercaillie, and on whose towering peaks roam herds of chamois by hundreds—form a region distinct from the rest of Spain. Rushing rivers and mountain-torrents coursing down each rent in those rock-ramparts attracted our earliest angling ambitions. Some of those efforts—with rod and gun—are recorded in Wild Spain , and we purpose attempting no more—whether wit
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CHAPTER XXX THE SIERRA NEVÁDA
CHAPTER XXX THE SIERRA NEVÁDA
T HE Sierra Neváda with its striking skylines, crisp and clean-cut against an azure background, is yearly surveyed by thousands of tourists in southern Spain. The majority content themselves with the distant view from the battlements of Alhambra or from the summer-palace of Generalife. Few penetrate the alpine solitude or scale peaks that look so near yet cost some toil to gain. We are not ashamed to admit that these glorious sierras have in themselves possessed for us attractions that transcend
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CHAPTER XXXI IN THE SIERRA NEVÁDA (Continued) ITS BIRD-LIFE IN SPRING-TIME
CHAPTER XXXI IN THE SIERRA NEVÁDA (Continued) ITS BIRD-LIFE IN SPRING-TIME
T HE long snow-lines of the sierra had vanished behind whirling cloud-masses, black and menacing. The green avenues of the Alhambra seemed gloomier than ever under a heavy downpour, while troops of rain-soaked tourists belied the glories of an Andalucian springtide. Serins sang in the elms, and wrynecks noisily courted, as we set forth with a donkey-team for the sierra. On former occasions we had explored northwards up the Darro towards Jaën, another year up the Genil, this spring we had selecte
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CHAPTER XXXII VALENCIA TWO NOTABLE WILDFOWL RESORTS
CHAPTER XXXII VALENCIA TWO NOTABLE WILDFOWL RESORTS
(1) The Albufera F OR centuries this marine lagoon—the largest sheet of water in Spain—has, along with the forests and wastes that formerly adjoined it, been a stronghold of wild animal-life. As early as the thirteenth century King James I., after wresting the Kingdom of Valencia from the Moors, and dividing its castles and estates among his nobles and generals, selected, with shrewd appreciation, the Albufera for his personal share of the spoils of war. For not only did the great lake with its
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CHAPTER XXXIII ON SMALL-GAME SHOOTING IN SPAIN
CHAPTER XXXIII ON SMALL-GAME SHOOTING IN SPAIN
H ARDLY will one enter a village posada or a peasant’s lonely cot without observing one inevitable sign. Among the simple adornments of the whitewashed wall and as an integral item thereof hangs a caged redleg. And from the rafters above will be slung an antediluvian fowling-piece, probably a converted “flinter,” bearing upon its rusty single barrel some such inscription—inset in gold characters—as, “Antequera, 1843.” These two articles, along with a cork-stoppered powder-horn and battered leath
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CHAPTER XXXIV ALIMAÑAS THE MINOR BEASTS OF CHASE
CHAPTER XXXIV ALIMAÑAS THE MINOR BEASTS OF CHASE
W E have no British equivalent for this generic term, applied in Spain to a group of creatures, chiefly belonging to the canine, feline, and viverrine families, that deserve a chapter to themselves. The Spanish word Alimañas includes the lynxes and wild-cats, foxes, mongoose, genets, badgers, otters, and such like. It might therefore be rendered as “vermin,” but surely only in the benevolent sense—as it were, a term of endearment. We have preferred the expression “minor beasts of chase,” though
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CHAPTER XXXV OUR “HOME-MOUNTAINS” THE SERRANÍA DE RONDA
CHAPTER XXXV OUR “HOME-MOUNTAINS” THE SERRANÍA DE RONDA
I. San Cristobal and the Pinsápo Region T HIS mountain-system may be regarded as an outlying eastern extension of the Sierra Neváda. Except at the “Ultimo Suspiro del Moro” there is no actual break, and both in physical features and in fauna the two ranges coincide, while differing essentially from the Sierra Moréna, their immediate neighbour on the north. The Serranía de Ronda, nevertheless, displays distinctive characters which entitle it to a place in this book; it forms, moreover, our “Home-
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CHAPTER XXXVI SERRANÍA DE RONDA (Continued)
CHAPTER XXXVI SERRANÍA DE RONDA (Continued)
II. THE SIERRA BERMEJA T HE Sierra Bermeja, standing on Mediterranean shore, demands a page or two if only because it affords a home to three of Spain’s peculiar and rarer guests—the pinsápo, the ibex, and the lammergeyer. Our earlier experience in Bermeja, our efforts to study its ibex—and to secure a specimen or two—are told in Wild Spain . Suffice it here to say that the characteristic of these Mediterranean mountains is that here the ibex habitually live, and even lie-up (as hares do), among
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CHAPTER XXXVII A SPANISH SYSTEM OF FOWLING THE “CABRESTO” OR STALKING-HORSE
CHAPTER XXXVII A SPANISH SYSTEM OF FOWLING THE “CABRESTO” OR STALKING-HORSE
S PAIN is a land of flocks and herds, of breeders and graziers. At the head of the scale stands the fighting-bull, monarch of the richest vegas ; at the opposite extreme come the shaggy little ponies and brood-mares that eke out a feral and precarious subsistence in the wildest regions. Throughout the marismas hardy beasts with wild-bred progeny on which no human hand has ever laid, abound, grazing knee-deep in watery wildernesses where tasteless reed or wiry spear-grass afford a bare subsistenc
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CHAPTER XXXVIII THE “CORROS,” OR MASSING OF WILDFOWL IN SPRING FOR THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION
CHAPTER XXXVIII THE “CORROS,” OR MASSING OF WILDFOWL IN SPRING FOR THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION
T HE withdrawal of the wildfowl at the vernal equinox affords an unequalled scenic display. It forms, moreover, one of those rare revelations of her inner working that Nature but seldom allows to man. Her operations, as a rule, are essentially secretive. A little may be revealed, the bulk must be inferred. Here, for once, a vast revolution is performed in open daylight, coram populo —that is, if the authors and a handful of Spanish fowlers be accepted as representative, since no other witness is
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CHAPTER XXXIX SPRING-TIME IN THE MARISMAS BIRD-LIFE IN A DRY SEASON
CHAPTER XXXIX SPRING-TIME IN THE MARISMAS BIRD-LIFE IN A DRY SEASON
B IRD-LIFE in the Spanish marisma—in spring no less than in winter—presents spectacles of such abounding variety as can nowhere in Europe be surpassed. In the Arctic are vaster aggregations, but these, comprising, say, only half-a-dozen species, are less attractive. It is the infinite kaleidoscopic succession of graceful and dissimilar forms that hour by hour flash on one’s sight—in a word, it is variety that lends abiding charm to our Spanish bird-world. These scenes have already been described
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CHAPTER XL SKETCHES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
CHAPTER XL SKETCHES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
S PAIN is a land where one can enjoy seeing in their everyday life those “rare” British birds that at home can only be seen in books or museums. So far as it can be done in half-a-dozen brief sketches, we will endeavour to illustrate this. I. An Evening’s Stroll from Jerez. Spanish towns and villages are self-contained like the “fenced cities” of Biblical days. The pueblecitos of the sierra show up as a concrete splash of white on the brown hillside. Once outside the gates you are in the campo =
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Appendix A Specific Note on the Wild-Geese of Spain
Appendix A Specific Note on the Wild-Geese of Spain
T HE Greylag Goose ( Anser cinereus ) is the only species we need here consider. For of the many hundreds of wild-geese that we have shot and examined during the eighteen years since the publication of Wild Spain , every one has proved to be a Greylag. This is the more remarkable inasmuch as an allied form, the Bean-Goose, was supposed in earlier days to occur in Spain, though relatively in small numbers. Col. Irby estimated the Bean-Geese as one to 200 of the Greylags; but no such proportion an
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