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 plain below, 
Sees first a speck upon the sky — 
Then, poised on sweeping wings of woe, 
A Vulture, Bat-like, passes by. 
C. C. M. 
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 up- 
ward as though lifted by some super- 
human power, then bearing away 
before it, gathering the force or mo- 
mentum which shot its air-laden frame 
higher and higher until it almost dis- 
appeared 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 filled 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 
egg was taken in May, 1889, in the 
Santa Lucia Mountains, San Luis 
Obispo County, California, at an alti- 
tude of 3,480 feet. It was deposited in 
a large cave in the side of a perpendic- 
ular 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 as- 
sertion, 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. An unusually large 
one, however, was recently taken 
in Monterey County, California. To 
catch the mighty 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 libertv. 
