38 HUNTING CAMPS. 



far as the condor is concerned ; but before I began 

 these I had had many times to face the task of keeping 

 the condor off game that I had shot in the open country, 

 and I found that to succeed in this was quite impos- 

 sible unless I remained beside the dead animal. To tie 

 handkerchiefs and rags to flutter and float above the 

 body had no scaring effect, for the birds disregarded 

 them altogether, and to drag the low bush of the 

 pampas over the kill was equally futile. 



On the other hand, a guemal and a wild bull, which I 

 shot at different times in thick wood, though partially 

 eaten by both pumas and foxes, did not appear to have 

 attracted the notice of the condors. These instances, 

 and one or two others of a similar kind, seem to show 

 that the condor finds its food purely by eye. One day 

 in the vicinity of Lake Buenos Aires I shot a young 

 guanaco. At the moment the animal fell, and for five 

 minutes afterwards there was not a condor in sight in 

 any quarter of the heavens. Having gralloched the 

 animal and taken a part of the meat, I retired to the 

 shelter of some rocks which lay about a hundred and 

 fifty yards from the carcase. I had hardly reached 

 them when a condor swept over and, after circling once, 

 pitched beside the kill. This bird had not begun to 

 peck when he was joined by two more, and in six 

 minutes by my watch no less than thirty-eight of the 

 great carrion-eaters had arrived on the scene. They 

 made little noise as they pecked and tore, but when I 

 rose from my hiding-place where, by the way, I 

 certainly was not invisible to them and ran towards 

 them, they, or some of them, gave vent to a kind of 

 snuffling groan ; I cannot describe it more accurately 

 than in those words. Although the birds gorge when 



