[Illustration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
Nests in the mountain-forests of Central Spain, and winters in Andalucia. Sketched in Cote Doñana--"Getting under way."]
Spain, as geologically designed, being, as to one-half of her superficies, either a desert wilderness or a mountain solitude, naturally lends congenial conditions of life to the predatory forms that rely on hooked bill, on tooth and claw, fang and talon, to ravage their more gentle neighbours. Savage raptores, furred and feathered, characterise her wilder scenes. Wherever one may travel, a day's ride will surely reveal huge vultures and eagles circling aloft, intent on blood. Throughout the wooded plains the majestic Imperial Eagle is overlord--you know him afar in sable uniform, offset by snow-white epaulets. Among the sierras a like condominium is shared by the Golden and Bonelli's Eagles--and they have half-a-dozen rivals, to say nothing of lynxes and fierce wolves (we give a photo of one, the gape of whose jaws exceeds by one-half that of an African hyaena). Then there patrol the wastes a horde of savage night-rovers, denominated in Spanish _Alimañas_, to which a special chapter is devoted.
[Illustration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
WHITE-FACED DUCK (_Erismatura leucocephala_)
Bill much dilated, waxy-blue in colour. Wings extremely short; a sheeny grebe-like plumage, and long stiff tail, often carried erect.]
In Estremadura, where man is a negligible quantity, and along the wild wooded valley of the Tagus, roams the Fallow-deer in aboriginal purity of blood--whether any other European country can so claim it, the authors have been unable to ascertain. In Cantabria and the Pyrenees the Chamois abounds.
Of the big game (the list includes red, roe, and fallow-deer, wild-boar, ibex, chamois, brown bear, etc.), we treat in full detail hereafter.
As regards winged game, this south-western corner of Europe, is singularly weak. There exists but a single resident species of true game-bird--the redleg. Compare this with northern Europe, where, in a Scandinavian elk-forest, we have shot five kinds of grouse within five miles; while southwards, in Africa, francolins and guinea-fowl are counted in dozens of species. True, there are ptarmigan in the Pyrenees, capercaillie, hazel-grouse, and grey partridge in Cantabria, but all these are confined to the Biscayan area. Nor are we overlooking the grandest game-bird of all, the Great Bustard, chiefest ornament of Spanish steppe, and there are others--the lesser bustard, quail, sand-grouse, etc.--but these hardly fall within our definition. As for the teeming hosts of wildfowl and waterfowl that throng the Spanish marismas (some coming from Africa in spring, the bulk fleeing hither from the Arctic winter), all these are so fully treated elsewhere as to need no further notice here.