TURKEY VULTURE 
Called also: Turkey Buzzard 
E very child south of Mason and Dixon's line 
knows this big buzzard that sails serenely 
with its companions in great circles, floating 
high overhead, now rising, now falling, with 
scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings. 
In the air, it expresses the very poetry of motion. 
No other bird is more graceful and buoyant. 
One could spend hours watching its fascinating 
flight. But surely its earthly habits express 
the very prose of existence; for it may be seen 
in the company of other dusky scavengers, walk- 
ing about in the roads of the smaller towns and 
villages, picking up refuse; or, in the fields, 
feeding on some dead animal. Relying upon 
its good offices, the careless farmer lets his dead 
pig or horse or chicken lie where it dropped, 
knowing that buzzards will speedily settle on it 
and pick its bones clean. Our soldiers in the 
war with Spain say that the final touch of horror 
on the Cuban battlefields was when the buz- 
zards, that were wheeling overhead, suddenly 
dropped where their wounded or dead comrades 
fell. 
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