TURKEY VULTURE 



Called also: Turkey Buzzard 



T? VERY child south of Mason and Dixon's line 

 ^^ knows this big buzzard that sails serenely 

 with its companions in great circles, floating 

 high overhead, now rising, now falling, with 

 scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings. 

 In the air, it expresses the very poetry of motion. 

 No other bird is more graceful and buoyant. 

 One could spend hours watching its fascinating 

 flight. But surely its earthly habits express 

 the very prose of existence; for it may be seen 

 in the company of other dusky scavengers, walk- 

 ing about in the roads of the smaller tow^ns and 

 villages, picking up refuse; or, in the fields, 

 feeding on some dead animal. Relying upon 

 its good offices, the careless farmer lets his dead 

 pig or horse or chicken lie where it dropped, 

 knowing that buzzards will speedily settle on it 

 and pick its bones clean. Our soldiers in the 

 war with Spain say that the final touch of horror 

 on the Cuban battlefields was when the buz- 

 zards, that were wheeling overhead, suddenly 

 dropped where their wounded or dead comrades 

 fell. 



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