THE TURKEY BUZZARD 127 



size or power enough even to make an attempt to get 

 away. Because of this lack of spirit they have found food 

 hard to secure and have degenerated into eating carrion. 

 No animal can be so far decayed or smell so bad that it is 

 not considered good food by these birds. It is in the 

 search of food that they are sailing, sailing, sailing, and 

 they fly at the great heights they do so that they may see 

 for miles in every direction. Doubtless no bird has a 

 keener sight than turkey buzzards. They are able to 

 recognize a dead animal at a distance of several miles, pos- 

 sibly further. One instance of my childhood days nicely 

 illustrates this fact. 



It was in the middle of a cold winter and food had been 

 scarce for all of the birds, both the meat eaters and those 

 that fed on seeds. The snow piled deep over everything 

 and the thermometer seemed unable to rise above fifteen 

 or twenty below zero day or night. We were so unfor- 

 tunate as to have an animal die ; as the ground was frozen 

 too deeply to think of burying it, we simply dragged it 

 off into a field at considerable distance from the house and 

 left it on the snow. No one had supposed there were 

 any buzzards in the country during this cold weather, in 

 fact, at no time in summer or winter had we seen more 

 than two or three buzzards at a time. Surely no more than 

 a half dozen of these birds lived within ten miles of us. 

 Yet within twenty-four hours of the death of this animal 

 twenty-three buzzards were feeding on the carcass. It was 

 a mystery to everyone where they came from. That was 

 the first time I saw these birds at close hand. 



The carcass in the pasture was only two or three rods 

 from the hedge. It was easy to slip up behind this hedge 

 and watch the buzzards feed only two or three rods away. 



