56 GLIMPSES OF INDIAN BIRDS 



day's work, solemn, and shabby, and hungry, un- 

 complaining, and poor, and at night flaps up into 

 some tree and quietly dozes off to sleep." Neophron 

 ginginianus always puts me in mind of the heroes 

 in some of George Gissing's novels. 



Very different are the ways of the other members 

 of the vulture tribe. They are not content to wander 

 about among rubbish heaps and in other still less 

 savoury places in the hope of securing any small 

 morsel. They demand substantial fare ; nothing 

 less than a large carcase pleases them. It is true 

 that they have sometimes to put up with garbage of 

 the lesser sort, so that those which have not been 

 successful in their hunt have perforce to gather in 

 the trees near the municipal slaughter-house and await 

 the casting forth of the offal. Their usual method 

 of securing a meal is of the won-by-waiting description. 

 They mount high into the air and float on outstretched 

 pinions 3000 or 4000 feet or more above the level 

 of the earth, and thence scan its surface with eager 

 eye. When the hand of death strikes any terrestrial 

 creature, down comes the soaring vulture. His earth- 

 ward flight is observed by his neighbour, floating in 

 the air a mile away, who follows quickly after number 

 one. In a few seconds numbers three, four, five, six^ 

 and others are also making for the quarry, so that 

 the stricken creature, before life has left it, is sur- 

 rounded by a crowd of hungry vultures, and, as the 

 poet has it, " but lives to feel the vultures bick'ring 

 for their horrid meal." Nor do these wait for death 

 to set in before they begin their ghastly repast. It 



