42 
They have repeatedly sailed past close to my nets, when I have 
had live fowls and pigeons picketed as lures for Hawks and 
Eagles. They 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 high mountains, in a perfectly wild country, 
with no human habitation within miles. Surely, if the birds 
had a natural desire for such food, it was temptingly laid out 
for them. On the contrary, the Lammergeyer will at once 
come down on a well-cleaned carcass, a heap of bones, or the 
skeletons of smaller mammalia. I once killed one that was 
picking up, and swallowing soup bones behind my cook-house. 
I have sometimes seen them stop in their quarterings of a hill 
side, and settling down, pick up a bone, swallow it, and fly off 
again, recommencing their careful survey of the hill side, 
doubtlessly, for more bones. At Paoree, in the interior of 
Ghurwal, in the height of winter when snow lay on the ground, 
I had the carcasses of several bears thrown out on a little 
ridge not far from my house. Invariably after the vultures 
had cleaned them, they were attacked by the Lammergeyer, 
some of which I shot in the act of tugging at the tough sinews 
and tendons left by the other Vultures. In Ghurwal, the 
Lammergeyer is known to the natives as the Hdrrphoor, i. e. 
bone-breaker. A name well borne out by a habit of the bird, 
which I have verified by actual observation. It picks up a 
rather large-sized bone with which it soars high up into the 
air, and then by dropping it on a ledge of rock smashes it, 
when it descends, picks up the fragments and swallows them. 
It is only two years since I saw this again done under my 
own eye at Khoorpa Tal. 
“The Lammergeyer is naturally of a very shy disposition, 
though when its object is to secure some tempting morsel, it 
will pass within a few feet of one. 
‘“‘In the commencement of the breeding season, 7. e., when 
the birds first begin to pair, they may be seen swooping at 
each other and turning over on their backs. Sometimes one 
darts up towering to a considerable height with a graceful sweep- 
ing curve, when the other comes down from a greater height, and 
meets it at the apex of its ascent. So on the pair continue till lost 
to sight in the azure of the sky. I have usually observed this 
kind of courtship to commence after the breaking up of the rainy 
season, and continue to about the end of October. 
“There must be, of course, some foundation 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 depredations committed by 
