478 ORNITHOLOGICAL SKETCHES 
In the Sierra de Ronda and the Sierra Nevada it is quite a 
common bird. In the latter mountains I found it at a con- 
siderable elevation and near the nest of a Bearded Vulture. 
I also saw it everywhere in the plain of Granada. 
At the town of Tangiers, on the north coast of Africa, it is 
of course very common. 
On the Guadalquivir, where the dunes and the well-wooded 
banks of the river afford it fewer suitable resorts, I hardly 
ever observed it; and in the plain between Zeres della Fron- 
tera and Seville, and the immediate neighbourhood of these 
towns, it was everywhere exceedingly rare. 
I have travelled so little in Portugal that I can say nothing 
definite about it in that country, but I saw it in museums 
and do not doubt that it is there abundant. 
In the range of the Picos de Europa, in Northern Spain, 
I found it from the sea-coast up to the loftiest regions above 
the limit of the woods, and it was equally plentiful in the 
mountains of the interior near Avila, the Sierra Guadarrama, 
and the Sierra de Gredos, as well as in the intervening plains. 
In the latter I saw it close to the snow-line, and on the utterly 
barren spurs of the former I found it in great numbers 
near the Escorial, a fact which may be accounted for by the 
peculiarly favourable lie of these mountains. 
The habits of this Vulture are, so far as I have been able 
to observe them, unusually variable and entirely dependent 
upon the locality occupied by each individual. Immediately 
outside the gates of the towns it descends to the level of 
a very low domestic creature, and lives upon carrion and 
filth, while on the mountain-tops, near the perpetual snow, it 
strikes the observer as being a noble bird of prey. One 
characteristic it retains under all conditions of life, and that 
is a gluttonous love of an enticing repast, which makes it 
