THE EGYPTIAN VULTURE. 



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the smaller Vultures, such as the Neophrons, always giving place to them, and allowing them to finish 

 their feast before venturing to approach. 



The Egyptian Vulture (Neophron* percnopterus^} is also familiarly known as Phai-aoh's Chicken. 

 It is a small bird about two feet and a half in length, white in plumage, with black wings. A great part 

 of the face is bare and of a yellow colour. The young birds are brown. In Europe the Egyptian 

 Vulture is a migratory bird, but it breeds in many localities in the Mediterranean region, and has 

 even occurred once or twice on the shores of the British islands. In winter it takes itself to the Cape 



EGYPTIAN VULTURE. 



of Good Hope. It is much valued in certain places as a scavenger, as it devours excrementary 

 matter, but Mr. Gumey states that its food also consists of can-ion of various descriptions, and in 

 default of such food it occasionally preys upon rats, field mice, small lizards, snakes, insects, and even 

 earthworms. Colonel Irby observes that it is probably the foulest-feeding bird that lives, and that it is 

 very omnivorous, devouring any animal substance, even all sorts of excrement ; nothing comes amiss 

 to it, and he has sometimes seen them feeding on the sea-shore on dead fish thrown up by the tide. 

 The same gentleman^ says that on their migrations they pass Gibraltar, which is one of their lines of 

 passage, about the end of February, and they breed in the neighbourhood of that place, beginning to 

 lay about the 1st of Api'il. The nest is composed of a few dead sticks, always lined with wool, rags, 



A mythological name. 

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t ntpK.vos, dark coloured ; irrtpov, a wing ; so called from the colour of its wings. 

 J "Ornithology of the Strait of Gibraltar," p. 31. 



