WINGED LIFE 



181 



the eagles, the hawks, all respond after their 

 individual fashions. 



The condor is perhaps the vulture's peer 

 in the matter of sailing. He belongs to the 

 vulture family, though very much larger than 

 any of its members, sometimes measuring 

 fifteen feet across the wings and weighing forty 

 pounds. He is the largest bird on the conti- 

 nent. At the present time he is occasionally 

 seen wheeling high in air like a mere insect in 

 the great blue dome. It is said that he soars 

 as high as twenty-five thousand feet above the 

 earth. But to-day he sails alone and his tribe 

 has grown less year by year. With the eagles 

 he keeps well up in the high sierras and builds 

 a nest on the inaccessible peaks or along the 

 steep escarpments. He belongs to the desert 

 only because it is one of his hunting-grounds. 



This may be said of the eagles and the hawks. 

 They hunt the desert by day, but go home to 

 the mountains at night. The owls are some- 

 what different, not being given to long flight. 

 The deep caves or wind-worn recesses under 

 mountain ledges furnish them abiding-places. 

 These caves also send forth at dusk a full com- 

 plement of bats that seem not different from 

 the ordinary Eastern bats. The burrowing 



