THROUGH WILD EUROPE 293 



the amount of meat necessary to keep alive such 

 hordes of flesh-eating birds must be very consider- 

 able. But here the supply of dead animals was 

 more than sufficient to keep them ; in one day we 

 passed five dead horses, sheep, and cows, and another 

 living skeleton in the shape of a horse feebly tottered 

 about hardly able to stand upright. 



Many of these no doubt had perished on account 

 of the drought. There was hardly any grass, and 

 the country was overstocked with cattle from the 

 lower parts, all seeking food where there was not 

 sufficient for the ordinary numbers. Again, during 

 wet weather hundreds of cattle get bogged and 

 perish miserably, and in the cold weather they die 

 of exposure and starvation, so that all the year 

 round the Vultures are provided for. If there is a 

 little temporary scarcity in the supply they can go 

 without much inconvenience many days without 

 eating at all, and their power of flight enables them 

 to travel hundreds of miles, if need be, into another 

 country in their daily search for food. 



The following day we went to a distant part of 

 the forest after a nest of Imperial Eagle, or what 

 had been occupied by a pair of Imperial Eagles 

 last year. Now we found it had been taken 

 possession of by a pair of Saker Falcons {Falco 

 sacer), which had four young in down. 



It was one of the finest thinos I have seen in the 



o 



