The birds of Jamaica

by Philip Henry Gosse

“Here again was the vision, unaided by the sensitiveness of the nostrils, directing two birds with the same appetite, at the same moment, to the same object.

“For the next example, I am indebted to the records of a Police Court. A clerk in the engineer department at Up-park Camp, brought before the magistrates of St. Andrew’s, on the 20th of January, 1840, a man who had been beset in the night by the dogs of the barracks. The poultry-yard had been repeatedly robbed; and this person was supposed to have been prowling after the roost-fowls, at the time the dogs rose upon him.” This case had been heard, and the man committed to the House of Correction, when a complaint was presented against another man whom Major G., also of the camp, had detected under similar circumstances, and lodged in the guard-house. Two days after his detection, “the Major observed some Carrion-Vultures, hovering about a spot in the fields, and on sending to see what was the matter, a Kilmarnock cap containing a dead fowl, and some eggs, tied up in a pair of old trousers, was found very near to the spot, where the prisoner was caught. This discovery by the aid of the Vultures confirming the suspicion against the prisoner, he was condemned.

“The last instance that I shall relate is one in which the senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling were all exercised; but not under the influence of the usual appetite for carrion food, but where the object was a living, though wounded animal.

“A person in the neighbourhood of the town, having his pastures much trespassed on by vagrant hogs, resorted to his gun to rid himself of the annoyance. A pig which had been mortally wounded, and had run squealing and trailing his blood through the grass, had not gone far before it fell in the agonies of death. At the moment the animal was perceived to be unable to rise, three Vultures at the same instant descended upon it, attracted no doubt by the cries of the dying pig, and by the scent of its reeking blood; and while it was yet struggling for life, began to tear open its wounds and devour it.

“These several instances, I think, abundantly shew that all the senses are put in requisition by the John-crow Vulture in its quest for food.”

From the facts thus presented by Mr. Hill we gather also, that the common opinion is erroneous, which attributes to the Vulture a confinement of appetite to flesh in a state of decomposition. Flesh is his food; and that he does not pounce upon living prey like the falcons, is because his structure is not adapted for predatory warfare, and not because he refuses recent, and even living flesh, when in his power. If the John-crow Vulture discovers a weakling new-born pig apart from the rest, he will descend, and seizing it with his beak, will endeavour to drag it away; its cries of course bring the mother, but before she can come, the Vulture gives it a severe nip across the back, which soon ensures the pig for his own maw. If a large hog be lying in a sick condition beneath a tree, the Vulture will not hesitate to pick out its eyes, having first muted upon the body, that it may discover whether the animal be able to rise; the contact of the hot fæces arousing the hog if he be not too far gone. Cattle also he will attack under similar circumstances. One of my servants once saw a living dog partly devoured by one. The dogs of the negroes, half-starved at home, “bony, and gaunt, and grim,” if they discover carrion, will gorge themselves until they can hardly stir, when they lie down and sleep with death-like intensity. A large dog thus gorged, was sleeping under a tree, when a John-crow descended upon him, perhaps attracted by the smell of the carrion which the dog had been devouring, and began tearing the muscles of the thigh: it actually laid open a considerable space, before the poor animal was aroused by the pain and started up with a howl of agony. The wound was dressed, but the dog soon died.

A notion is very prevalent, that the Vulture refuses the flesh of its own kind; or that if there ever be an exception, it is only when the stomach of the dead bird is filled with carrion. This I have proved to be unfounded. I shot one in August, the body of which I threw out; in a very few minutes it was surrounded by others, and the bones picked clean, though the stomach was nearly empty, and the body had no odour of carrion.

“The Aura Vultures,” says Mr. Hill, “are often to be observed soaring in companies, particularly previous to a thunder-storm. This occurrence is commonly remarked, because at almost all other times this species is seen solitary, or, at most, scouring the country in pairs. They appear to delight in the hurly-burly of transient squalls, gathering together, and sweeping round in oblique circles, as the fitful gust favours them with an opportunity of rising through the blast, or winging onwards through the misty darkness of the storm. The effect which this imparts to a tropical landscape at a time when thick clouds are upon the mountains, and all vegetation is bending beneath the sudden rush of the tempest, as gust gathers louder and louder, is particularly wild and exciting. Ordinarily, however, in the evening, when the sea-breeze is lulling, and the fading day-beam is changing like the hues of the dying dolphin, they delight to congregate, and career at an immense height. At this time they soar so loftily, that they are scarcely discernible as they change their position in wheeling from shade into light, and from light into shade. They seem as if they rose upward to follow the fading day-light, and to revel in the departing sunbeams, as, one after the other, the varying hues are withdrawn, or irradiate only the upper heavens.

“There is a salacious predilection of the Aura Vulture for the black hen of the poultry-yard, and the black turkey, supported by so many well-authenticated instances, that I cannot doubt the fact. It is said that the Vulture on these occasions makes its amorous attack with an eagerness assuming the character of ungovernable fury. Fear overcomes the hen, and the sudden assault terminates in an embrace, from which she escapes only to linger and die in a very short time. A sort of carcinoma uteri is the consequence. * * *

“This is altogether a curious and very unaccountable fact. Those who know how difficult it is to bend instinctive nature, and induce the union of animals different and yet similar, will perceive the perplexity in which this occurrence is involved. The only link of relationship in these events, is the very distant similitude of colour; for the unnatural predilection is restricted to fowls of black plumage.”