Once as we were drifting by a bit of sandbank, the river being very low, I remember well an awful-looking, unrecognisable object, dirty, dishevelled, and, as children say, “very bluggy,” coming towards us over the skyline. It more resembled some poor drunk man who had been fighting and had got fearfully knocked about, and what bird it was, if bird at all, we knew not. Well, this dilapidated-looking thing walked slowly down the slope to the water’s edge; then we saw it had been having a real gorge; it was hideously rotund, and had apparently been living inside “the joint” until, sick with repletion, unable to fly, its very feathers clogged with gore, it made its way down to refreshen and clean itself, which when done, to our surprise it turned out to be just a common Egyptian Vulture.
Why the Vultures are featherless on neck and head is told in an old story in Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant. King Solomon, according to this account, was journeying in the heat of the day. “The fiery beams were beginning to scorch his neck and shoulders when he saw a flock of vultures flying past. ‘O Vultures!’ cried King Solomon, ‘come and fly between me and the sun, and make a shadow with your wings to protect me, for its rays are scorching my neck and face.’ But the Vultures would not, so the King lifted up his voice and cursed them, and told them that as they would not obey, ‘The feathers of your neck shall fall off, and the heat of the sun, and the cold of the winter, and the keenness of the wind, and the beating of the rain, shall fall upon your rebellious necks, which shall not be protected like other birds. And whereas you have hitherto fared delicately, henceforth ye shall eat carrion and feed upon offal; and your race shall be impure till the end of the world.’ And it was done unto the Vultures as King Solomon had said.”
