A collateral result of the shortage of water wrought yet further havoc among the birds which had elected to remain, and accentuated the prescience of those that had departed. Nesting-places, ordinarily islanded in mid-water, were now left stranded on dry land and thus open to the ravages of the whole fraternity of four-footed egg-devouring vermin. Many species, we know, foresee such risks and invariably avoid them; others, less prudent, make the attempt and lose their labour. The white-eyed pochards, for example, which are accustomed to nest in islanded clumps of rush and dense aquatic grasses, this year simply provided free breakfasts to rats and ichneumons! We happened to require two or three settings of these ducks to hatch-off under hens, but no sooner did a marked nest contain three or four eggs than all were devoured! As to the coots, of which both the common and crested species breed in the marisma in myriads, they simply gave it up as a bad business. They did not depart, but resigned themselves to the necessity of skipping a season. Gulls, great and small, with graceful marsh-terns, floated spectre-like, surveying in solitude and silence arid wastes where before they had found aquatic Edens. Once or twice we also noticed the small white herons (buff-backed and egret) flying disconsolately over their lost homes. A similar remark would apply to most of the other marsh-breeders--we need not recapitulate them all. Stilts, for example, and avocets remained perforce in single blessedness--the latter in noisy querulous bands, quite wild and showing no tendency to assume spring notes or habits. We _did_ chance on a single avocet's nest, where, in other years, we have found hundreds. The same with the stilts--they also retained winter ways. Curiously on May 17--one wet day--two male stilts had a regular set-to over an irresponsive female; the only symptom of their love-making we noticed all that spring! [Illustration: AVOCETS FEEDING Though long-legged, these are half-webfooted and swim freely.] Here, in the very height of what ought to have been the breeding-season, we had all these birds (and many others), instead of hovering overhead and shrieking in one's ear, flying wild in great packs at 100 yards.