BIRDS OF PREY 179 



southward into Lower California. 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 Cali- 

 fornia condor. Not a wing or feather moved, but, resting 

 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." 



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 says there have probably been but 

 three or four eggs of the California vulture taken, of which 

 he has one. The egg was taken in May, 1889, in 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 

 which was, the collector says, lined with feathers plucked 

 from her own body. This assertion, however, Mr. Taylor 

 says, may be an unwarranted conclusion. From the facts 

 at hand, it appears that the California condor lays but a 

 single egg. 



The condor is not an easy bird to capture, for it has a 

 fierce temper and a powerful beak. One was recently cap- 

 tured in Cahfornia by means of a lasso. 



