. Wild Spain ... records of sport with rifle, rod, and gun, natural history and exploration . bia and femora into the upperair, thence dropping them upon rocks, has been knownsince the days of ^Eschylus. Hence the fouler feeders areuseful to him ; he requires their assistance, but demandsthat they keep a respectful distance. His attitude towardsthe vultures may be compared with that of certain high-souled anthropoids of human affinity, who utilize theirhumbler neighbours and cut them dead next day! Thus it happens that while in a range of sierra inhabitedby Griffons, the Lammergeyer will not b
. Wild Spain ... records of sport with rifle, rod, and gun, natural history and exploration . bia and femora into the upperair, thence dropping them upon rocks, has been knownsince the days of ^Eschylus. Hence the fouler feeders areuseful to him ; he requires their assistance, but demandsthat they keep a respectful distance. His attitude towardsthe vultures may be compared with that of certain high-souled anthropoids of human affinity, who utilize theirhumbler neighbours and cut them dead next day! Thus it happens that while in a range of sierra inhabitedby Griffons, the Lammergeyer will not be found, yet apair of the latter usually have their eyrie at no greatdistance from the vulture-colony.* During our ibex-shooting campaigns among the Mediter-ranean sierras, we frequently fell in with this species. * Onr own experience on this point would not enable us to assertthis fact so positively—indeed we have observed instances in whichthe reverse case appeared to obtain ; but the circumstance has beenstated to us by an ornithologist whose authority stands beyond questionor THE HOME OF THE LAMMERGEYER. 309 It was almost the first bird seen in the Sierra Bermeja,where a superb adult passed slowly along our line, carry-ing what ai)peared to be a live snake in his claws, somefour feet of writhing reptile dangling beneath. TheLammergeyer, by the way, like the eagle, carries every-thing in its claws, not in the beak. We were rather sur-prised at seeing this bird here, the local hunters havingspecially assured us that only aguilas reales bred inthat sierra. This name, however, proved to be that Itcreapplied to the Lammergeyer; its proper recipient, theGolden Eagle (a pair of which were nesting in a crag notfar off) being known as aguila negra. Vultures, it may be mentioned, were chiefly remarkableby their absence in these mountains—one only saw asolitary Griffon at long intervals, and in that barrenrocky-mountain region (afterwards mentioned), in whichwe found the L
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