Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/29

Rh leaves it before sunrise and it sits hour after hour, motionless and noiseless, waiting for her return. Noon may be on before it descries her, a mere speck in the sky, but growing bigger every moment as she slopes down towards the nest. At last, with heavy flapping, she lets herself down, and great is the cackling, for though she carries nothing in her beak, the youngster knows that she is loaded. What follows is not polite. In plain language she disgorges great lumps of meat and thrusts them into its mouth. A crow sits close by, mindful of the proverb that there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. A vulture cannot feed her young in any other way than this, for the carcase on which she dined may be ten miles away. And indeed I never saw a vulture carrying food, or anything else, except a stick for its nest, and that in its beak. All other birds of prey carry with their feet, but this is impossible to the vulture because it is incapable of swooping and cannot even rise off the ground without taking a run. Once fairly in the air, no bird surpasses the majesty of its flight. The question has often been hotly discussed whether birds can sail without flapping their wings. The difficulty originated of course with somebody of that unfortunate class who must reason about questions of fact instead of looking. He demonstrated that such a feat was impossible. The vultures kept en doing it all the same, and any one may watch them. For hours together they will sail in circles, or rather in spirals, without the slightest motion of their wings, beyond trimming them to the wind, like the sails of a boat. Of course there must be a wind,