400 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



forest. Upon noticing some small fish and crays in it, 

 it occurred to him to capture a few specimens of them 

 for future study. A year or so afterwards, these were 

 referred to naturalist friends specialists in those lines 

 and both the fish and the cray were found to be species 

 entirely new to science. Thus it goes! And to the 

 observing naturalist, scouting through this part of the 

 country, there is no telling what new creatures he may 

 meet with anywhere in the circlet of States bordering on 

 the Gulf of Mexico. Further, there are numerous animals 

 in that region of which we 

 know a great deal with re- 

 spect to their habits and 

 their anatomy; while on 

 the other hand, in the case 

 of some others, that knowl- 

 edge is not as full as it 

 might be, or as we would 

 like it to be. 



As to birds, there will 

 probably be no surprises 

 with respect to discovering 

 new species in our Gulf 

 States; although, in the 

 future, some new sub- 

 species may be taken, and 

 such information as we 

 now possess of the habits 

 of those at present known 

 may be augmented in the 

 cases of some of the rarer 

 forms. Especially does this 

 apply to the breeding habits 

 of the resident and migra- 

 tory species; to the nature 

 of their food, and to the 

 dates of arrivals and de- 

 partures during the vernal 

 and autumnal migrations. 



Perfect as all this may 

 be, our knowledge of the 

 anatomy and physiology of 

 not a few of our feathered 

 forms is very limited, and 

 an excellent example illus- 

 trating this point has come 

 up recently. It refers to the 

 matter of the senses of sight 

 and smell in our common 

 Turkey Vulture or Turkey Buzzard. (Figs. 4 and 5.) 

 For a long time it remained a moot question as to how 

 this great, black bird sustained itself in flight without 

 any apparent flapping or other movement of its wings. 

 In the sections of the country where it occurs, nearly 

 everybody is familiar with the fellow, and have noticed 

 that, at certain times, it sails around in great circles 

 above the earth without the slightest wing-movement 

 whatever. During such times it has been studied with 

 the greatest care through high-power glasses, and not 

 a joint or a feather of its wings is seen to move. The 



THE YOUNG OF THE BARRED OWL 



Figure 3. This is a most remarkable looking little fellow, more like 

 some puff-ball than a bird. The writer had him alive until he pre- 

 sented him to the Washington "Zoo." This downy plumage of young 

 owls is still in evidence some time after the true feathers begin to 

 appear; so when the bird is somewhat older than the one here figured, 

 its appearance is truly remarkable. 



bird simply circles about at its pleasure as immovable as 

 though made of wood. It is said that physicists and some 

 aeronauts have solved this problem scientificially. How- 

 ever, that is not the question to be touched upon here, 

 but one that most people believe had been solved long 

 ago, which has now come up again as not having been 

 elucidated to the entire satisfaction of all practical orni- 

 thologists and others. This matter refers to the question 

 as to how the Turkey Vulture discovers the dead animals 

 upon which it feeds whether by the sense of sight or 



smell. Audubon, who had 

 a way of enlarging on many 

 facts that were known by 

 no means always truthfully 

 still further complicated 

 this question when he stat- 

 ed that 'in the Floridas, I 

 have, when shooting, been 

 followed by some of them, 

 to watch the spot where I 

 might deposit my game, 

 which, if not carefully 

 covered, they [the Turkey 

 Vultures] would devour." 

 How the vultures came to 

 know that Audubon was 

 out after game on such oc- 

 casions, or how successful 

 he might be, or whether he 

 had any ammunition with 

 him, together with other 

 essentials points for them 

 to know, in that they 

 might not waste their valu- 

 able time following him 

 about, is not explained by 

 the great bird man. In fact 

 Audubon says nothing fur- 

 ther on this point though 

 in one of the octavo edi- 

 tions of his work some 

 editor touches upon it in 

 a footnote. However all 

 this may be, Audubon 

 evidently believed that Tur- 

 key Vultures discovered 

 their prey or the carcasses 

 upon which they feed 

 through the sense of sight; 

 it must have been through their wonderful insight that 

 they followed him about when they saw he carried a 

 gun. Alexander Wilson, however, states that "their 

 sense of smelling is astonishingly exquisite, and they 

 never fail to discover carrion, even when at a distance 

 of several miles from it." This is a pretty good story, 

 too; it is quite a question whether any living animal 

 possesses so powerful a sense of smell as to be able to 

 detect the presence of a dead horse or cow three or four 

 even more miles away. At any rate, it would seem 

 that the question has again been raised, and that steps 



