Vulture

a family of birds of prey. The head and neck are bare, but the lower part of the neck is surrounded by a ruff of feathers into which the head may be withdrawn partly. The beak is strong and hooked at the tip. The legs are bare to the knee. The feet and claws, unlike those of the hawk, are not adapted to seize and carry away, but to hold flesh with a trampling motion while it is torn apart by the beak. The vulture lives chiefly on dead animals. It seems to prefer putrid flesh. One of the ghastly scenes of a battlefield is the presence of vast numbers of vultures that, it is said, especially during the Thirty Years' War, learned to wait on the movements of armies. The lammergeier or lambstealer of the Alps, with feathered toes, belongs rather to a division of the falcon family, as it has seizing talons or claws. The North American representative of the vulture family is the buzzard; that of South America is the condor. The Egyptian vulture or "Pharaoh's chicken," is a small species of the eastern Mediterranean. It is a common scavenger in the towns of Syria, Egypt, and Turkey. It follows the long caravans to pick the bones of any camel that may fall by the wayside. Though not an attractive topic, the vulture is an apt subject for allusions. Sheridan speaks of "such protection as vultures give to lambs." Byron mentions the "rage of the vulture," and the greatest of Greek tragedians chains Prometheus to a rock while a Jove-sent vulture tears at his vitals daily for having stolen fire from heaven. See Buzzard; Condor; Parsees; Prometheus; Falcon; Hawk