io8 
WILD WINGS 
exclaiming, “Where’s my Barred Owl!” All we could find 
was a solitary feather. The hogs had eaten it, arsenic and 
all, besides a Florida Duck and more or less of our pro¬ 
visions. My friend consoled himself that there would be at 
least one sick hog that day. Little satisfaction did he get; 
if the beast had been sick, it had evidently soon recovered, 
for the usual precious band of nine paid us a visit early next 
morning, hungry as ever, and eager for another breakfast on 
luscious owl-skin with cotton dressing and arsenical sugar. 
The men who told us of the buzzard-roost wrongly suim¬ 
posed that the birds nested in the trees, like the ibises. The 
two handsomely blotched eggs of each pair are laid on the 
ground, in such places as hollow logs or stumps, caves or 
thickets. I was once shown an old circular stone slave-prison, 
in South Carolina, where a Turkey Buzzard always nested. 
Trees and shrubbery had grown around and concealed it, 
and the roof had fallen in. Climbing in through a window 
opening and scrambling down, I found j^lenty of buzzard 
feathers and dirt in the thicket of weeds, but by this time — 
May — the young scavengers had taken to wing and de¬ 
parted. In another place, in North Carolina, another Turkey 
Buzzard always was accustomed to nest in a certain old hol¬ 
low stump, near a farmhouse. The owner of the land allowed 
no one to disturb the brooding mother, and enjoyed seeing 
her bristle up and strike, and hearing her hiss. The young 
are interesting, and rather j^retty, with their woolly white 
suits. Neither old nor young can utter any sound save a low 
guttural murmur, a little sort of gasp, and a prolonged hiss. 
This muteness of the stalwart birds may not be inappropri¬ 
ate, for it is their lot to live in the presence of death, where 
it is fitting to keep silence, or to speak in whispers, with bated 
breath. 
When I first journeyed South, I confess that I felt consid- 
