THE CALIFORNIA VULTURE. 



Among the crags, in caverns deep, 



The Vulture rears his brood; 

 Far reaching is his vision's sweep 



O'er valley, plain, and wood; 

 And wheresoe'er the quarry lies, 



It cannot 'scape his peering eyes. 

 The traveler, from the plane below, 



Sees first a speck upon the sky — 

 Then, poised on sweeping wings of woe, 



A Vulture, Bat-like, passes by. 



DOCTOR BREWER states that 

 the single species composing 

 this very distinct genus belongs 

 to western North America, and, 

 so far as known, has the most restricted 

 distribution of all the large raptorial 

 birds in the world. It is found on the 

 coast ranges of southern California from 

 Monterey Bay southward into Lower 

 California. It has become very much 

 reduced in numbers and extinct in lo- 

 calities where it was formerly abundant, 

 which is doubtless due to the indiscrim- 

 inate use of poison which is placed on 

 carcasses for the purpose of killing 

 Wolves, Bears, Lynxes, Cougars, and 

 other animals which destroy Sheep, 

 Calves, and other cattle of the stock- 

 men.' Davie says it is more common in 

 the warm valleys of California, among 

 the almost inaccessible cliffs of the 

 rough mountain ranges running parallel 

 with the Sierra Nevadas for a hundred 

 miles south of Monterey. It associates 

 with the Turkey Buzzard, and the habits 

 of both species are alike, and they often 

 feed together on the same carcass. 



The Vulture's flight is easy, graceful, 

 and majestic. A writer who watched 

 one of these gigantic birds thus pictures 

 it : "High in air an aeronaut had 

 launched itself — the California Condor. 

 Not a wing or feather moved, but rest- 

 ing on the wind, like a kite, the great 

 bird, almost if not quite the equal of its 

 Andean cousin, soared in great circles, 

 ever lifted by the wind, and rising higher 

 and higher into the empyrean. Not a 

 motion of the wing could be seen with 

 careful scrutiny through the glass, but 

 every time the bird turned and faced the 

 wind it seemed to bound upward as 

 though lifted by some superhuman 

 power, then bearing away before it, 

 gathering the force or momentum which 

 shot its air-laden frame higher and high- 

 er until it almost disappeared from sight 



— a living balloon." 



The ordinary California Buzzard and 

 the singular Ravens of Santa Catalina 

 Island often give marvelous exhibitions 

 of soaring or rising into the air without 

 moving their wings, and when it is re- 

 membered that their bodies are reduced 

 to a minimum of weight, and that even 

 the bones are llled with air, it is almost 

 scientifically and literally true that they 

 are living balloons. And yet the weight 

 of the Vulture is sometimes twenty-five 

 pounds, requiring immense wings — eight 

 and a half to eleven feet from tip to tip 

 — to support it. 



Mr. H. R. Taylor, of the late Nidolo- 

 gist, says there have probably but three 

 or four eggs of the California Vulture, 

 been taken, of which he has one. The 

 tgg was taken in May, 1889, i^^ the Santa 

 Lucia Mountains, San Luis Obispo 

 County, California, at an altitude of 

 3,480 feet. It was deposited in a large 

 cave in the side of a perpendicular bluff, 

 which the collector entered by means of 

 a long rope from above. The bird was 

 on the nest, which was in a low place in 

 the rock, and ''-''^*'^''^ was, the collector 

 says, lined with feathers .plucked from 

 her own bodv. This assertion, however, 

 Mr. Taylor says, may be an unwarranted 

 conclusion. From f^^e fart- -' ^^and, it 

 appears that the California Condor lays 

 but a single tgg. 



The Condor is not an easy bird to 

 capture, for it has a fierce temper and 

 a powerful beak. An unusually large 

 one, however, was recently taken 

 in Monterey County, California. To 

 catch the mightv creature William J. 

 Barry made use of a lasso, such as 

 ranchmen have with which to round up 

 obstreperous cattle. The strength of 

 one man was barely sufficient to im- 

 prison it. It is said that the appe- 

 tite of the bird was not affected by its 

 loss of liberty. 



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