ard is gregarious, but it seems unlikely
from the small number of young noted at any time that every female
incubates each year. The young birds are easily distinguished by their
size when feeding, and high up in air by the worn primaries of the older
birds. It is when the young go out of the nest on their first foraging
that the parents, full of a crass and simple pride, make their
indescribable chucklings of gobbling, gluttonous delight. The little
ones would be amusing as they tug and tussle, if one could forget what
it is they feed upon.

One never comes any nearer to the vulture's nest or nestlings than
hearsay. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold enough, it
seems, to do killing on their own account when no carrion is at hand.
They dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the hunter home from the hill,
and will even carry away offal from under his hand.

The vulture merits respect for his bigness and for his bandit airs, but
he is a sombre bird, with none of the buzzard's frank satisfaction in
his offensiveness.

The least objectionable of the inland scavengers is the raven,
frequenter of the desert ranges, the same called locally "carrion crow."
He is handsomer and has such an air. He is nice in his habits and is
said to have likable traits. A tame one in a Shoshone camp was the butt
of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was another with
the children, but an arrant thief. The raven will eat most things that
come his way,--eggs and young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even,
lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches cleverly; and whatever he is
about, let a coyote trot never so softly by, the raven flaps up and
after; for whatever the coyote can pull down or nose out is meat also
for the carrion crow.

And never a coyote comes out of his lair for killing, in the country of
the carrion crows, but looks up first to see where they may be
gathering. It is a sufficient occupation for a windy morning, on the
lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of them eying each other
furtively, with a tolerable assumption of unconcern, but no doubt with a
certain amount of good understanding about it. Once at Red Rock, in a
year of green pasture, which is a bad time for the scavengers, we saw
two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and
only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.

Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures,
and their cognizance