THE IBIS. 



FOURTH SERIES. 



No. V. JANUARY 1878. 



I. — A Contribution to the Ornithology of Asia Minor. 

 By C. G. Danford. 



[Continued from ' The Ibis,' 1877, p. 274, and concluded.] 



1. Gypaetus BARBATus (L.) . Lorru, Kcl lorru. 



This bird is so common throughout the Taurus that hardly 

 a day passed without our seeing some of them, as they either 

 methodically beat the sides of the ravines or swooped about 

 the villages, hankering after skeletons which had been picked 

 bare by Ravens and Griffon- Vultures. Such a meal seems 

 best suited to their taste, and they spend days in breaking up 

 perfectly dry bones. How they get the great jagged bits 

 down their throats is hard to understand ; but that they do 

 succeed in swallowing broad pieces more than four inches 

 long, was proved by the dissection of their large and long but 

 not muscular stomachs, which were filled with such fragments, 

 in addition to pieces of hoof, mats of wild-pig's hair, collec- 

 tions of vulture^s toes, locusts, and a good deal of grass-root. 

 The effect of this diet seems to be to free the bird entirely 

 from the offensive smell of Vultures proper. 



The Lammergeyer begins breeding in the Taurus about the 



SER. IV. VOL. II. B 



