Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/264

240 Snow-vultures are numerous in Kan-su, and we often wondered how they could find sufficient food, especially as the Mongols, Tangutans, and Chinese often eat carrion themselves, and the vultures would have but a small share of the dead domestic cattle. In summer too, when the weather is rainy and the mountains are often clothed in mists, it must be extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to see the prey from a distance, and it is probable that at this season the vultures take very distant flights to countries where the atmosphere is clearer. A flight of a few hundred miles is no exertion to this bird, which sails all day long beneath the clouds almost without flapping its wings.

Such is their rapacity that notwithstanding their habitual wanness they return to the carrion after they have been several times fired at. Their tenacity of life is almost incredible: my companion and I once fired a dozen charges of slugs at a number of them only fifty paces off, without killing one.

They may be easily shot with ball, however, if you will take up a position in ambush near some exposed food; but you must be careful to hide yourself, and your best plan is to select a small cave, and plant its entrance with bushes. The bait should be carrion, or any offal laid on a freshly drawn hide, and disposed about seventy paces from your place of concealment, to enable you to move at your ease without fear of startling the birds. It is of no use stationing yourself before eight or nine o'clock in the morning, when the vultures leave their eyries, and