To a northerner it is hard to believe that this is mid-winter, when almost every tree remains leaf-clad, the brushwood green and flower-spangled. Arbutus, rosemary, and tree-heath are already in bloom, while bees buzz in shoulder-high heather and suck honey from its tricoloured blossoms--purple, pink, and violet. Strange diptera and winged creatures of many sorts and sizes, from gnat and midge to savage dragon-flies, rustle and drone in one's ear or poise on iridescent wing in the sunlight, and the hateful hiss of the mosquito mingles with the insect-melody. Over each open flower of rock-rose or cistus hovers the humming-bird hawk-moth with, more rarely, one of the larger sphinxes (_S. convolvuli_), each with long proboscis inserted deep in tender calyx. Not even the butterflies are entirely absent. We have noticed gorgeous species at Christmas time, including clouded yellows, painted lady and red admiral, southern wood-argus, Bath white, _Lycaena telicanus_, _Thäis polyxena_, _Megaera_, and many more. On the warm sand at midday bask pretty green and spotted lizards,[10] apparently asleep, but alert to dart off on slightest alarm, disappearing like a thought in some crevice of the cistus stems.
[Illustration: GREAT GREY SHRIKE (_Lanius meridionalis_)]
Hard by a winter-wandering hoopoe struts in an open glade, prodding the earth with curved bill and crest laid back like a "claw-hammer"; from a tall cistus-spray the southern grey shrike mumbles his harsh soliloquy, and chattering magpies everywhere surmount the evergreen bush. Where the warm sunshine induces untimely ripening of the tamarisk, some brightly coloured birds flicker around pecking at the buds. They appear to be chaffinches, but a glance through the glass identifies them as bramblings--arctic migrants that we have shot here in midwinter with full black heads--in "breeding-plumage" as some call it, though it is merely the result of the wearing-away of the original grey fringe to each feather, thus exposing the glossy violet-black bases.
[Illustration: SPANISH GREEN WOODPECKER (_Gecinus sharpei_)
Birds, as a broad rule, possess no "breeding-plumage." They only renew their dress once a year, in the autumn, and breed the following spring in the worn and ragged plumes. It's not poetic, but the fact.[11] This is not the place to enumerate all the characteristic forms of bird-life, and only one other shall be mentioned, chiefly because the incident occurred the day we drafted this chapter. One hears behind the rustle of strong wings, and there passes overhead in dipping, undulated flight a green woodpecker of the Spanish species, _Gecinus sharpei_. With a regular thud he alights on the rough bark of a cork-oak in front, clings in rigid aplomb while surveying the spot for any sign of danger, then projects upwards a snake-like neck and with vertical beak gives forth a series of maniacal shrieks that resound through the silences.[12] By all means watch and study every phase of wild-life around you--the habit will leave green memories when the keener zest for bigger game shall have dimmed--but never be caught napping, or let a silent stag pass by while your whole attention is concentrated on a tarantula!