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.
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