THE BEARDED VULTURE. 
523 
would not touch a bird! In fact, they would, though 
hungry, disgorge with evident disgust what they had 
been compelled by force to swallow. Speaking of this 
recalls to my mind a rather important fact, namely, that 
the Lammergeir is never mobbed by other birds, such as 
the Kestrel, Crow, Raven, Chough, and Alpine Crow; 
at least, I have never seen it happen. Moreover, the 
construction of this bird is not that of a rapacious bird, 
which, like the Eagle, seizes other animals, and, after 
strangling and tearing them with the claws or beak, bear 
their victim aloft. The talons of the Lammergeir are 
like those of the true Vultures, while its beak resembles 
that of the Egyptian Vulture, though perhaps rather 
more powerful than that of the last-mentioned species. 
Thus it is no bird of prey, at least in the ordinary 
acceptation of the word, and it seems to me very 
improbable that it should swoop upon anything from 
a height, though it is said to do so. It is a splendid 
bird on the wing, and traverses immense distances daily 
in search of food. In this way it comes across as 
much carrion as, or more than, the Vultures, which latter 
birds are met with much more frequently, and though 
scarcely less voracious than the Lammergeir, still find 
abundance of food. 
According to all accounts the Bearded Vulture, at times, 
takes such an amount of food as would seem perfectly 
astonishing, especially when the size of the pieces swal¬ 
lowed is taken into consideration. The artist, Wilhelm 
Georgy, a close observer of Nature, told me that he has 
watched a Lammergeir in Switzerland remain for hours 
motionless on a rock digesting bones, so large that some 
inches might be seen protruding from its gullet; the 
bird, however, quietly waited until the lower portion of 
4 A 
