By April the males have assumed a splendidly handsome breeding-dress. The neck, swollen out like a jargonelle pear, is clad in rich velvet-black, the long plumes behind glossy and hackle-like, and adorned with a double gorget of white. All this finery is lost by August. Thenceforward the sexes are alike save for the larger size and brighter orange of the males, the females being smaller and yellower. They are strictly monogamous, yet the males "show-off" in the same fantastic way as great bustard and blackcock. About mid-May the female lays four (rarely five) glossy olive-green eggs in the thick covert of thistles or palmettos. In summer the food of the little bustard consists of snails and small grasshoppers, and on the table they are excellent, the breast being large and prominent and displaying both dark and white flesh--the latter, however, being confined to the legs. CHAPTER XXVI FLAMINGOES THE QUEST FOR THEIR "INCUNABULA" [Illustration: A TYPICAL SIGHT IN THE MARISMA] The 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 _incunabula_ of the flamingo; but their vast extent--"as big as our eastern counties," Howard Saunders wrote--and the irregularity of the seasons (since flamingoes only remain to nest in the wettest years) combined to frustrate exploration. First in the field was Lord Lilford--as early as 1856; and both during that and the two succeeding decades he and Saunders (who appeared on the scene in 1864) undertook repeated journeys--all in vain. The record of these makes splendid reading, and will be found as follows:-- Lord Lilford, "On the Breeding of the Flamingo in Spain," _Proceedings Zoological Society of London_, 1880, pp. 446-50; Howard Saunders, _ibid._, 1869, and the same authority in the _Ibis_, 1871, pp. 394 _et seq._ The late Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, who visited Spain in May 1879, likewise failed to reach the nesting spot--apparently through the usual cause, not going far enough--though a few eggs were found scattered on the wet mud of the marisma. (Recorded by Lord Lilford as above.) Thus the question remained unsettled till 1883, when a favouring season enabled the present authors to succeed where greater ornithologists had striven in vain. [Illustration]