44 HUNTING CAMPS. 



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 }'oung 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 opportunity offers to such an extent that they 

 can only with difficulty rise from the ground, on this occa- 

 sion such of the guanaco meat as I had left gave but a 

 snack to each, and they all flew off with a great beating of 

 wings. 



On another day, having again shot a guanaco, I sat 

 down in the open on a stone not more than fifty yards 

 from it. Soon the condors began to appear, as well as 

 some coranchos. The latter perched on the bushes at a 

 distance, and the condors did not alight until I had gone 

 some forty or fifty yards further off, when at last one bolder 



