330 CONDOR. 



for carrion, and nothing but the urgent stimulus of hunger can bring 

 them to attack living creatures, and then their cowardice will not allow 

 them to meddle with any but the feeble or diseased which are incapable 

 of defending themselves. They will also combine together to overpower 

 their prey, if they see the least danger of resistance. A single Cougar, 

 or even a courageous bird, will drive from their prey a whole troop of 

 Condors, which however seldom amounts to more than five or six, as 

 they do not collect in such numerous bodies as their fellow Vultures. 

 When feeding on a Cow, a Guanaco, or a Paco, they first pick out the 

 eyes, then tear away and devour the tongue, and next the entrails, at 

 last picking the flesh from the bones. Smaller animals they generally 

 swallow whole. Guided by their amazingly acute faculty of smell, the 

 Condor will arrive, performing circular evolutions, from the highest 

 regions of the atmosphere upon a carrion, and often, trusting to their 

 powers of digestion, they swallow bones and flesh together. The Indians, 

 too indolent to keep clean their butchering or similar places, and often 

 neglecting to bury their dead with sufficient carefulness, have a great 

 veneration for this bird and others of its kind, to which they trust to 

 rid them of such nuisances. The regard with which they are treated 

 makes them so familiar, that Humboldt relates his being able to approach 

 within two yards of a troop of Condors before they retreated, though 

 he had other persons in his company. When full-fed the Condor will 

 remain motionless on a projecting rock, and has then a sinister appear- 

 ance ; if on the ground, however, he allows of a close chase before 

 having recourse to his ample wings, hopping along before his pursuer. 

 When on the contrary he is pressed by hunger and light from emptiness, 

 he will soar to extreme heights in the atmosphere, especially in clear 

 weather, whence he can discover prey at any possible distance. They 

 lay in the most inaccessible parts of the Andes, near the limit of per- 

 petual snow, on the most broken and terrific precipices, where no other 

 living creature can dwell. Nests have been found at the extraordinary 

 elevation of fifteen thousand feet. Their eggs are usually laid on the 

 naked rock, or with very little preparation, and never on trees, which 

 they even avoid alighting on, unlike their congeners in this respect, and 

 always on rocks or the ground, the straightness of their nails making 

 this easier for them. The eggs are white, and three or four inches long. 

 The young are entirely covered with very soft whitish down, and the 

 mother is said to provide for them during a long time. The facts rela- 

 tive to their propagation are not, however, sufficiently ascertained, for 

 how are we to verify assertions relating to operations performed so 

 much beyond the reach of ordinary observation. 



Authors describe various modes that have been resorted to for destroy- 

 ing the Condors in their native countries, where they sometimes become 

 a nuisance ; such as poisoning carrion, seizing them by the legs by 



