THE OSPKEY. 



53 



habits of this bird, and both accounts I fully 

 believe have scarcely a ^rain of truth in them. 

 All I can positiveh^ say upon the point, how- 

 ever, is that I have known the bird well in its 

 native haunts for thirty years and more, and 

 never once in all that time have I seen it stoop 

 to auA'thing but a dead carcase. As to carrying- 

 off hens, dog's, lambs, or children, I say the feat 

 would be utterly impossible, for the creature 

 does not possess the strong-ly curved sharp- 

 pointed claws of the Eag-le, but the far straighter 

 and perfectly blunt talons of the Vulture" 



Mr. R. Thompson also, after close and con- 

 stant observation of the habits of the Lammer- 

 g-eier for twelve years, writes: 



"I have never seen them attack or come down 

 to a living- animal. They have repeatedly 

 sailed past close to ni}' nets when I have had 

 live fowls and pigeons picketed as lures for hawks 

 and eag-les. The^' have passed within a few 

 feet of these without once showing- a desire to 

 pick up any of the birds; and this, too, on the 

 tops of hig-h mountains in a perfectly wild 

 country, with no human inhabitants within 

 miles. On the other hand, they will at once 

 come down on a well cleaned carcas. a heap of 

 bones, or the skeletons of smaller mammalia*. 

 There must, of course, be some foundation (he 

 adds) for the many statements that have been 

 put forth as to the rapacious character of this 

 bird. But this foundation I believe to consist 

 in the natives constantly attributing- the dep- 

 redations committed by Eagles to the Lammer- 

 geier". 



As to the weig-ht which the larg-er Eag-las can 

 carrj' in the shape of prej', the writer last quoted 

 says the Golden Eagle will kill and carry off 

 young deer (/. e., fawns) and kids, as I have my- 

 self seen. One, at Strathmore, in Caithness, 

 while devouring the carcase of a mountain hare, 

 was attacked by a fox; a fight ensued, and after 

 a severe struggle, in which the fox got badly 

 torn b^' the Eagle's talons, and the bird got 

 severely bitten in the breast; the Eagle, to save 

 itself, took flight, with the fox holding on, until, 

 at a considerable height in the air, the latter 

 dropped to the ground and was killed by the fall. 

 Mr. Robert Gra3' took pains to verify this 

 storj'. 



Mr. A. O. Hume, writing of Pallas's Sea Eagle, 

 says: 



•'A Grey Goose will weigh on the average 71b. 

 (much heavier are recorded), but I have repeat- 

 edly seen good sized Grey Geese carried off in 

 the claws of one of these Eagles, the birds flying 

 slowl)' and low over the surface of the water, 

 but still quite steadily". 



He once saw an Eagle of this species on the 

 river Jumna capture a fish so larg-e that the bird 

 only with difficulty succeeded in reaching a low 

 sandbank in the river with its prey. As it made 

 for this bank it flew so low, and with such dif- 

 ficulty that the writhing fish in its claws struck 

 the water every few yards, and twice seemed 



likely to pull its persecutor under water. On 

 reaching the sandbank some 250 yards distant 

 from the observer, a shot from his rifle caused 

 it to quit the fish, which was then recovered 

 and found to be a carp (Cyprinus rohita), weigh- 

 ing over 131b., that is, considerably heavier 

 than its captor. For the reason above given, 

 such a feat would be impossible for the Lam- 

 mergeier. 



Come we now to the Condor of South America, 

 a bird which is known to have a wide geogra- 

 phical range. It is found on the west coast, 

 from the Strait of Magellan along the Cordillera 

 as far as eight degrees north of the equator. 

 The steep cliff near the mouth of the Rio Negro 

 is its northern limit on the Patag-onia coast, and 

 they have there wandered about 400 miles from 

 the great central line of their habitation in the 

 Andes. Further south, among the bold preci- 

 pices at the head of Port Desire, the Condor is 

 not uncommon; yet only a few stragglers occa- 

 sionally visit the sea coast. A line of cliff near 

 the mouth of the Santa Cruz, Patagonia, is fre- 

 quented by these birds, and about eighty miles 

 up the river, where the sides of the valley are 

 formed by steep basaltic precipices, the Condor 

 reappears. From these facts, says Darwin, 

 from whom I quote ("Naturalist's Voyage Round 

 the World", p. 182) it seems that the Condors 

 require perpendicular cliff's. In Chile they haunt 

 during the greater part of the 3'ear the lower 

 country near the shores of the Pacific, and at 

 night several roost together in one tree; but in 

 the early part of summer they retire to the most 

 inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there 

 to breed in peace. As reg^ards the expanse of 

 wing in the Condor, there appears to be some 

 conflict of testimony, although it may well be 

 that the discrepancy in the measurements which 

 have been recorded is due to the fact that they 

 were taken from birds of different ages and 

 sexes. Thus, in the journal above quoted, un- 

 der date April 27, 1834, at Santa Cruz, Patagonia, 

 Darwin writes: "This day I shot a Condor. It 

 measured from tip to tip of the wings 8^ft., and 

 from beak to tail 4ft." From measurements 

 supplied by others it would appear that this was 

 quite a small one. In Ecuador, for example, 

 the largest seen by Mr. Edward Whymper mea- 

 sured 10ft. 6in. from tip to tip of extended wings, 

 although he remarked that most of those seen 

 at Antisana and elsewhere were not so much as 

 9ft. ("Travels in the Andes"). The experience 

 of Capt. George Byam, the author of "Wander- 

 ings in some of the Western Republics of 

 America", is instructive on the subject of 

 Condors. He saw many which measured 12ft. 

 in expanse of wing, and one of 13ft., while the 

 largest out of several which he shot in Chili 

 measured exactly 15ft. from tip to tip when pulled 

 out fairly and not too hard. "It was (he says) a 

 very powerful heavy bird, with legs almost as 

 thick as mv wrist, and the middle claw or finger, 

 which I kept, was 7in. in length". Mr. N. E- 

 Bieber, writing in the Field of February 11, 

 1899, on "Deer Shooting in Bolivia", remarks 

 incidentallv that a good sized male Condor will 



*This does not quite accord with remarks of Mr. .\bel Chapman, who, in his delightful book. ■-'Wild Spain," p. 314. 

 quotes Manuel de la Torre, the best field naturalist in Spain, to the effect that the Lammergeier takes young lambs 

 and kids, and that he shot one in the act of eating a rabbit which he had just seen it kill. 



