Читать книгу Egyptian Birds - Charles Whymper - Страница 6

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White all over body, wings black, a curious fringe of long feathers round the head; these sometimes get stained a more or less strong yellow; bare parts round eye and beak, yellow. Legs pinky, eyes carmine red, but Shelley says they do not get the full red eye till their fourth year.

Entire length, 27 inches.

THIS vulture, as shown by the above description, is markedly different from the great Griffon Vulture, and there can be no possible mistake in recognising it. From the tail-piece, which is taken from a painting of one on the inside of a wooden outside coffin casing, one can easily see the peculiarities of this bird; and at Deir-el-Bahari there are many painted examples showing the bird more or less in its natural colours, the bright yellow of the bill is shown, and the dark wings are rendered in a dull green. Why they should render one colour by another seems strange, but here again we must wait till Mr. Howard Carter gives us his explanation of this and the many other points he is still patiently working out. The wonderful way in

EGYPTIAN VULTURE

which the vultures assemble directly there is anything in the way of carrion has been often noticed: they will appear where a moment before there was not one to be seen either on the earth or in the blue vault. And this was at one time regarded as one of the wonders of the bird world; but as is so often the case, more exact knowledge rather reduces the marvellous. The habit of vultures is to fly at a very great height and to keep circling round; each bird practically keeps to one area, another takes a great sweeping circle adjoining; and others all the way round are in the same fashion, ever circling on the look-out. The moment one discerns anything down he swoops; this is instantly observed by the bird on the adjoining beat, and down he rushes; this again is repeated indefinitely, and so in a few minutes a dozen or more vultures may be there at the find where before were none. The circles that each make are frequently very large, perhaps many miles; it can easily be imagined, therefore, what a large area can be covered, and covered most minutely, by, say, half a dozen birds. The young are very different in plumage, being a rather dirty grey-brown all over, with brown eyes, and they retain this peculiarity till their fourth year, when they get the white and black plumage. But they somehow always look untidy birds. This perhaps holds good of all vultures when sitting in repose; their wings seem to be too loose jointed, and they hang their feathers so as to give the impression that they are not firmly fixed in and might fall out, but the moment they spring into the air their wings gain at once a sort of rigidity, and all the sloppy, untidy effect disappears. This bird is certainly more often seen than the preceding, since it is not afraid of the haunts of man; but one is not at all certain that it is really commoner. In all the representations of this as of other birds, the old Egyptian artists have a curious habit of depicting their birds with their legs stretched out too far in front, and looking as if the bird were in danger of falling over backwards.

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.”

Figs. 3 and 4. Drawing from a painting of a Hawk at Karnak, to show the overlap of the wing feathers.