How vultures find the dead body of an animal is just a little doubtful. Some naturalists have thought that they find it by means of sight, and others that they do so by means of smell. It seems almost certain, however, that when they are hovering high in the air they are really watching one another; so that when one of them sees a carcass and swoops down upon it, all the other vultures within sight notice what he is doing, and come hurrying up for a share in the banquet. This explains how it is that if an animal is killed when not a vulture is to be seen, quite a number of these great, strong, ravenous birds will make their appearance in a very short time.
The Lammergeier
This is the finest of all the vultures. It is found in Southern Europe, in Northern Africa, and in Western Asia, and is sometimes as much as four feet in length from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, while its wings may measure more than ten feet across when fully spread. It is one of the very few vultures which have the head and neck clothed with feathers. Besides this, a curious tuft of bristle-like hairs covers the nostrils, while a similar tuft grows just under the base of the bill. For this reason the bird is sometimes known as the bearded vulture.
Lammergeiers are generally found among high mountains, where they prey upon hares and marmots, and even upon rats and mice. They will visit the flocks, too, which are feeding upon the grassy slopes, and carry off kids and lambs. Chamois, when formerly they were more plentiful than now, used to be attacked by them, and their favorite plan was to swoop down upon them when they were standing on the brink of a precipice, strike them over into the depths below by a stroke of their powerful wings, and then descend to feed upon their mangled bodies.
The plumage of the lammergeier is grayish brown above and nearly white below. The feathers of the neck are white, and there is also a pale streak running down the middle of those upon the back.
The lammergeier makes a great clumsy nest of sticks, which is sometimes placed on a ledge of a lofty cliff, and sometimes in the topmost branches of a very tall tree. Two eggs are laid, which are dirty white in color, with brownish blotches.
The Condor
The condor is another very large vulture, inhabiting the great mountain chain of the Andes. There it may be seen soaring high in air, its keen eyes intently scanning the ground beneath it; and it may fly to and fro for hours, rising and falling and sweeping round in great circles, and yet never once flap its wings!
Condors live for the most part on llamas which have died a natural death, or which have been killed by pumas and only partly devoured; but two or three of them will unite together, when they are hungry, in order to kill sheep or cattle.
In color the condor is grayish black, with a ruff of white feathers round the lower part of the neck. On the head of the male is a large fleshy wattle. It makes no nest at all, but simply lays its two white eggs on a rocky ledge high up on the mountainside.