CHAPTER XXVI.
THE HOME OF THE LAMMERGEYER.
Since the time of those earlier efforts to scrape an acquaintance with the Lammergeyer (some of which form the subject of the last chapter), we have at length enjoyed opportunities of observing this grand bird in its true home, and here add a short summary of these later experiences.
Broadly speaking, this bird may be said to exist in all the higher mountain regions of Spain; but, as a rule, in small and decreasing numbers. In the north, there are eyries in Guipúzcoa and Navarre, one or two within sight of the French frontier; others in the Cordilleras of Leon and the Asturias—the magnificent gorge known as the Desfiladero de la Deva, being an immemorial haunt. We have observed them in the great central sierras of Castile, and they are known (but probably do not breed) in the Guadarrama range, within sight of Madrid. Nowhere common, there are yet more sporadic pairs to be seen sweeping low on the steep brown mountain-sides of certain Andalucian and Estremenian sierras than anywhere else in Spain. Here, however, as elsewhere, their numbers are being yearly reduced by the deadly poison laid by hill-farmers for wolves, and, in some cases, expressly for the Lammergeyer itself; for, rightly or wrongly, the great bird bears an ill-repute, and being, moreover, during the breeding-season, of confiding disposition—more so than eagle or vulture—is easily killed at the nest.
The Gypaëtus, like the noble eagles, is essentially a solitary bird, each pair (they remain paired for life) requiring a mountain region exclusively their own, and shunning the near propinquity of vultures and other large raptores. It is no doubt this trait of its character that explains its comparative absence from our "home" mountains round Ronda, and the failure of our search for it in that district; for the ramification of mountain-ranges which occupies that southernmost apex of Europe swarms with vultures, which crowd every crag and precipice in numbers quite unknown elsewhere. Such conditions are distasteful to the solitude-loving Lammergeyer.
Yet, while shunned as near neighbours, it appears certain that the vultures perform services of value to their nobler congener. Their office consists in stripping the skeleton of flesh, and leaving prepared for the "quebranta-huesos" (bone-smasher) his much preferred bonne-bouche of marrow-bones. Thus, while the respective haunts of the two species remain distinct, their hunting-areas must coincide.
The Lammergeyer disdains carrion; is never seen at those seething vulture-banquets which form so characteristic a spectacle in rural Spain; but he loves the bones, and his habit of carrying huge tibia and femora into the upper air, thence dropping them upon rocks, has been known since the days of Æschylus. Hence the fouler feeders are useful to him; he requires their assistance, but demands that they keep a respectful distance. His attitude towards the vultures may be compared with that of certain high-souled anthropoids of human affinity, who utilize their humbler neighbours and cut them dead next day!
Thus it happens that while in a range of sierra inhabited by Griffons, the Lammergeyer will not be found, yet a pair of the latter usually have their eyrie at no great distance from the vulture-colony.[60]
During our ibex-shooting campaigns among the Mediterranean sierras, we frequently fell in with this species.
