Flamingoes, for example (what few there were), continued massed in solid herds up to mid-May. A band of 300 that we examined closely on the 12th at the Caño de la Junquera (though fully 90 per cent were adults in perfect pink feather) contained not a single paired couple. Hard by the flamingoes some forty or fifty spoonbills were feeding. These, last year, nested at this spot, building upon or among the low samphire-scrub--a dangerously open situation for such big and conspicuous birds. This spring, though many remained in the marisma, not a spoonbill nested in the district at all. Flamingoes, by the way, had exhibited extreme restlessness throughout the spring. On February 22, for example, while steaming up the Straits of Gibraltar, we detected them in quite incredible numbers but at an altitude almost beyond the range even of prism-glasses--it was a dim similitude to drifting _cirri_ that first caught our eye. So vast was their aërial elevation that it was only after prolonged examination we at length recognised those revolving grey specks as being birds at all; presently a nearer band, directly overhead, revealed their characteristic identity. The bulk of these held a southerly tendency, towards Africa; others drifted undecided; while several bands, halting between two opinions, when lost to sight were wheeling beyond the Spanish hills. Ducks also in mid-May serried the skies in utterly anachronous skeins--reminiscent of winter. These were largely marbled ducks, all unpaired; but there were also very large aggregations of mallards. One such pack on May 10 certainly counted 500--a number we never remember to have seen massed together in Spain before, not even in winter. This was at the Hondon. A similar phenomenon was observed with the white-faced ducks. These curious creatures also remained in packs, and without sign of pairing, on the open waters of Santolalla--open only because aquatic plants had forborne to grow. In normal seasons these lakes are studded with great cane-brakes and islanded reed-jungles, within whose recesses these amphibians build their floating homes. This spring not a reed had grown--partly owing to cattle having destroyed the earlier shoots which are usually protected by deep water. There was literally no covert within which these ducks (and the swarming coots and grebes) could breed, even were they so minded--which they were not! The only ducks that had paired in earnest were gadwall, garganey, common and white-eyed pochard (of which the first three nest here in very limited numbers), together with normal quantities of mallard. [Illustration: HEAD OF CRESTED COOT The frontal plate is concave, whereas in the common coot it is convex.]