A BUZZARDS' BANQUET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2287, 30 December 1897, Page 50

A BUZZARDS' BANQUET.

One bright, .warm xiay last .January — a frog-waking day here in Southern New Jersey —I saw the buzzards in unusual numbers sailing over the pines, nearly two miles from my door. Hoping for a glimpse of something social in these unemotional, silent solitaries,

I hurried over to the pines, and, passing through the wood, found scores of the bnzzards feasting just beyond a fence in *an open field. Creeping up a little distance from the scene, I quietly hid ' in a, great drift of leaves and corn-blades that the winds had piled in the corner of the old fence, and became an interested spectator at the strangest, gruesomest assemblage ever Been — a buzzards' banquet. The silence of the nether world reigned over the banquet, Like ugly shades from across the Styx came the buzzards, a d<"-peaing the stillness with th«ir swishing ,«. It was an unearthly picture : the yellow winter sunlight, the stab-stuck cornfield, the dark pines had changed to features fitting some Stygian Stropbades, harpy-habited. The buzzards', great and sombre, were stalking awkwardly about, with the ends of their long wings occasionally dragging the ground, all fighting. deliberately acd calmly for a share of the spoil. This clumsy, silent semblance of battle heightened the unearthliness of the scene. The hobbling hitcb of a seal upon land is as graceful as was the uncertain strut of these fighting buzzitds,

The scums continued as long as the bnzzards

remained upon the ground, wordless and bleodles?, not-even a feather being disturbed gave those which roso with anger as the hair rises ton a drg'a back ; but the fight was terrible in 'its ticcannicesp. Upon the fence and in the top of a dead oak near by others

settltd, and lap3ed immfediately into a state ' of apparent unconsciousness that was almost a stupor. Here they sat, gloomy and indifferent, thoir heads drawn down between their shoulders, peacefully oblivions o£ all mundane things. .Each .buzzard seemed not to be aware that

Bty other buzzard was on the earth. Not one

■howed any hurry or anxiety to fall to eating. After alighting they would go through the

long process of fol icg up their wings aad packing them against their sides ; then. they would sit awhile as it trying to remember •why they bad come. Occasionally one would unfold his wings by sections, - pause a moment with them outstretched — persuaded,

it wonld seem, of his mistake— and, with a

few ponderous flaps, sail o5 into the sky without baring tasted the banquet. Then another upon the ground, having feasted, would run a f6w steps to get spring, and, bounding heavily into the air, would smite the earth once or twice with bis over-long wings and go swinging up above the trees. &s these grew small and disappeared in the brae distance others came into view, mere ipecks among the clouds, descending in ever3iminishing circles until they settled, without irord or greeting, with their fellowd at the Dsirquet. The fenoe was becoming black with them. Evidently some Mnd of new* spread even among theEeoincomniunicative ghouls. Soon l . one dropped upon the fence-stake over my head. He",-was.olad in rusty,: faded black; - iris.'. beak;; was railky white, his eyes big and .watery r and- wrinkled about his small head and snaky neck was fed, bald skin, completing a.;visage as degenerate and ugly as could be made without human assistance. Perhaps half a hundred were now gathered in a writhirg heap upon the ground. A bacquet this sana toasts and cheer — the essence of the unconvivial. It was a strange dumb show in serions reality rather than a banquet. The noise of their scuffling, the dry clashing of their wings, the occasional flapping and polling and pecking as they moved together were interspersed with low, serpent-like hisses. Except for a sort of half-heard, guttural croak at rare intervals, these hisses were the only utterances of*the buzzardß that broke the silence. So far as I know this batrachioreptilian language is the meagre limit of the buzzard's faculty of vocal expression. With croak and hiss he warns and wooes. And what tender emotion has a buzzard too subtle for expression by croak or niss ? And what need has he of words to add to the horror c f his countenance ? . . . The buzzards are a . Jaay, cowardly, degenerate set. That they have degenerated from something Jar removed is proved by the fact that at this late day they have a "decided preference for fresh foed — doubtless the taste of their ancestors — and even now are armed with the great talons and beak of the eagles. Through ages of disuse their talons and beak have become weakened, dull, and unfit for the hunt ; and vow the buzzard, instead of struggling for bis quarry, is content to eat a dinner in any - stage of decay. This discovery of the buzzard's fondness for fresh food led to some - interesting observations as to the relative strength of bis vision and power of ecent. - It is astonishing with what rapidity the buzzards collect from unknown ' distances about any carrion. A dead animal may be dragged -into the field, and in less than an boor there will be (cores of these sombre

creatures gathered about it, when in all the wide reach of the horizon never more than one or two have baen in sight at a time. You may spy a huzzird sailing so high that he appears no larger than a swallow. He is descending. Follow where he lights, and you find him eating the snake that you killed in the path a few minutes before. How did he discover from so great a height that tiny snake, entirely odourless ? And how were all the buzzards of the county so promptly notified of the death of Djbbin I—Lippincofct's Magazine, U.S.