The land-birds in winter you hardly see, for they "take cover."
Diametrically different--in cause and effect--is the case of wildfowl. These, by the essence of their natures and by their economic necessities, are always conspicuous, for they inhabit solely the open spaces of earth--the "spaces" that no longer exist at home: shallows, wastes, and tidal flats devoid of covert. Wildfowl, for that reason, have long learnt to discard all attempt at concealment, to rely for safety upon their own eyesight and incredible wildness. No illusory idea that security may be sought in covert abuses their keen and receptive instincts. Probably it never did. Nowadays, at any rate, they openly defy the human race with all its brain-begotten devices. There, in "waste places," wildfowl sit or fly--millions of them--conspicuous and audible so far as human sense of sight and sound can reach, and there bid defiance to us all. Much of these wastes are not (in the cant of a hypocritical age) "undeveloped," but rather, as means exist, incapable of development. Such spectacles of wild life as these Andalucian marismas to-day present are probably unsurpassed elsewhere in Europe--or possibly in the world. In foreground, background, and horizon both earth and sky are filled with teeming, living multitudes; while the shimmering grey monotony of the marisma, tessellated with its grey armies of the _Anatidae_, is everywhere brightened and adorned by rosy battalions of flamingoes. And out there, far beyond our visible horizon, there wander in that watery wilderness the wild camels, to which we devote a separate chapter.
Flamingoes ignore the limits of continents, and shift their mobile headquarters between Europe and Africa as the respective rainfall in either happens to suit their requirements. Hence, whether by day or night, the sight or sound of gabbling columns of flamingoes passing through the upper air is a characteristic of these lonely regions, irrespective of season. Cranes also in marshalled ranks, and storks, continually pass to and fro. The African coast, of course, lies well within their range of vision from the start.
[Illustration: (3) A CORRAL, OR PINE-WOOD ENCLOSED BY SAND.
Then as winter merges into spring--what time those clanging crowds of wild-geese and myriad north-bound ducks depart--there pours into Andalucia an inrush of African and subtropical bird-forms. The sunlit woodland gleams with brilliant rollers and golden orioles, while bee-eaters, rivalling the rainbow in gorgeous hues, poise and dart in the sunshine, and their harsh "chack, chack," resounds on every side. Woodchats, spotted cuckoos, hoopoes, and russet nightjars appear; lovely wheatears in cream and black adorn the palm-clad plain. With them comes the deluge--no epitomised summary is possible when, within brief limits, the whole feathered population of southern Europe is metamorphosed. The winter half has gone north; its place is filled by the tropical inrush aforesaid. Warblers and waders, larks, finches, and fly-catchers, herons, ibis, ducks, gulls, and terns--all orders and genera pour in promiscuously, defying cursory analysis.