So retentive is their memory that each year as May comes round our tame bustards keep constantly on the look-out for the first cart-load of green cut grass brought into the stable-yard for the horses. They even follow it right into the loose-box where it is stored, in order to feast on the grasshoppers it conceals, climbing all over the mountain of grass, but never scratching as hens or pheasants would do.
THE LITTLE BUSTARD (_OTIS TETRAX_--SPANISH, _SISÓN_)
The little bustard may fairly claim the proud distinction that it alone of all the game-birds on earth can utterly scorn and set at naught every artifice of the fowler--modern methods and up-to-date appliances all included. Here in Spain, though the bird itself is abundant enough (and its flesh delicate and delicious), it so entirely defies every set system of pursuit that no one nowadays attempts its capture. Practically none are killed save merely by some chance or accidental encounter.
True, during the fiery noontides of July and August even the little bustard enjoys a siesta and may then be shot. It will, in fact, "lie close" before pointers and cackle like a cock-grouse as it rises from those desolate _dehesas_ which form its home--vast stretches of rolling veld where asphodel, palmetto, and giant thistles grow rampant as far as eye can reach. But that scarce comes within our category of sport, since a solar heat that can (even temporarily) tame a _sisón_ is quite likely to finish off a Briton for good and all. And with the advent of autumn and a relatively endurable temperature, in a moment the _sisón_ becomes impossibly wild. Any idea of direct approach is simply out of the question, but beyond that, this astute fowl has elaborated a scheme--indeed a series of schemes--that nullifies even that one remaining resource of baffled humanity, "driving." You may surround his company, "horse-shoe" them with hidden guns--do what you will, not a single _sisón_ will come in to the firing-line. You cannot diagnose beforehand his probable line of flight, for he has none, nor can you influence its subsequent direction. For the little bustard shuts off all negotiation at its initiation by springing vertically in air, soaring far above gunshot, and there indulging in fantastic aerial evolutions more in the style of wigeon or other wildfowl than of a true game-bird as he is. Thus from that celestial altitude he spies out the country and all terrestrial dangers, finally disappearing afar amidst the wastes of atmospheric space. Frequently we have noticed the high-flying band, after, say, twenty minutes of such display of wing-power, descend directly to their original position at a safe interval after the drivers had passed forward thereof! Thus do they scorn our efforts and add insult to injury.