From The Quantity Of Dung On The Rocks
They Must Long Have Frequented This Cliff For Roosting And
Breeding.
Having gorged themselves with carrion on the
plains below, they retire to these favourite ledges to digest
their food.
From these facts, the condor, like the gallinazo,
must to a certain degree be considered as a gregarious bird.
In this part of the country they live altogether on the guanacos
which have died a natural death, or as more commonly
happens, have been killed by the pumas. I believe, from
what I saw in Patagonia, that they do not on ordinary occasions
extend their daily excursions to any great distance
from their regular sleeping-places.
The condors may oftentimes be seen at a great height,
soaring over a certain spot in the most graceful circles.
On some occasions I am sure that they do this only for
pleasure, but on others, the Chileno countryman tells you
that they are watching a dying animal, or the puma devouring
its prey. If the condors glide down, and then suddenly
all rise together, the Chileno knows that it is the puma
which, watching the carcass, has sprung out to drive away
the robbers. Besides feeding on carrion, the condors frequently
attack young goats and lambs; and the shepherd-dogs
are trained, whenever they pass over, to run out, and
looking upwards to bark violently. The Chilenos destroy
and catch numbers. Two methods are used; one is to place
a carcass on a level piece of ground within an enclosure of
sticks with an opening, and when the condors are gorged
to gallop up on horseback to the entrance, and thus enclose
them: for when this bird has not space to run, it cannot
give its body sufficient momentum to rise from the ground.
The second method is to mark the trees in which, frequently
to the number of five or six together, they roost, and they
at night to climb up and noose them. They are such heave
sleepers, as I have myself witnessed, that this is not a
difficult task. At Valparaiso, I have seen a living condor sold
for sixpence, but the common price is eight or ten shillings.
One which I saw brought in, had been tied with rope, and
was much injured; yet, the moment the line was cut by
which its bill was secured, although surrounded by people,
it began ravenously to tear a piece of carrion. In a garden
at the same place, between twenty and thirty were kept alive.
They were fed only once a week, but they appeared in pretty
good health. [2] The Chileno countrymen assert that the condor
will live, and retain its vigour, between five and six weeks
without eating: I cannot answer for the truth of this, but
it is a cruel experiment, which very likely has been tried.
When an animal is killed in the country, it is well known
that the condors, like other carrion-vultures, soon gain
intelligence of it, and congregate in an inexplicable manner.
In most cases it must not be overlooked, that the birds
have discovered their prey, and have picked the skeleton
clean, before the flesh is in the least degree tainted.
Remembering the experiments of M. Audubon, on the little
smelling powers of carrion-hawks, I tried in the above
mentioned garden the following experiment: the condors
were tied, each by a rope, in a long row at the bottom of a
wall; and having folded up a piece of meat in white paper, I
walked backwards and forwards, carrying it in my hand at
the distance of about three yards from them, but no notice
whatever was taken. I then threw it on the ground, within
one yard of an old male bird; he looked at it for a moment
with attention, but then regarded it no more. With a stick
I pushed it closer and closer, until at last he touched it with
his beak; the paper was then instantly torn off with fury,
and at the same moment, every bird in the long row began
struggling and flapping its wings. Under the same circumstances,
it would have been quite impossible to have deceived
a dog. The evidence in favour of and against the acute
smelling powers of carrion-vultures is singularly balanced.
Professor Owen has demonstrated that the olfactory nerves
of the turkey-buzzard (Cathartes aura) are highly developed,
and on the evening when Mr. Owen's paper was read
at the Zoological Society, it was mentioned by a gentleman
that he had seen the carrion-hawks in the West Indies on
two occasions collect on the roof of a house, when a corpse
had become offensive from not having been buried, in this
case, the intelligence could hardly have been acquired be
sight. On the other hand, besides the experiments of Audubon
and that one by myself, Mr. Bachman has tried in the
United States many varied plans, showing that neither the
turkey-buzzard (the species dissected by Professor Owen)
nor the gallinazo find their food by smell. He covered portions
of highly-offensive offal with a thin canvas cloth, and
strewed pieces of meat on it: these the carrion-vultures ate
up, and then remained quietly standing, with their beaks
within the eighth of an inch of the putrid mass, without
discovering it. A small rent was made in the canvas, and
the offal was immediately discovered; the canvas was replaced
by a fresh piece, and meat again put on it, and was
again devoured by the vultures without their discovering
the hidden mass on which they were trampling. These facts
are attested by the signatures of six gentlemen, besides that
of Mr. Bachman. [3]
Often when lying down to rest on the open plains, on
looking upwards, I have seen carrion-hawks sailing through
the air at a great height. Where the country is level I do
not believe a space of the heavens, of more than fifteen degrees
above the horizon, is commonly viewed with any attention
by a person either walking or on horseback.
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