Fifty-seven buzzards, one on each of fifty-seven fence posts at the rancho El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September morning, sat solemnly while the white tilted¹ travelers' vans lumbered² down the Canada de los Uvas. After three hours they had only clapped their wings, or exchanged posts. The season's end in the vast dim valley of the San Joaquin is palpitatingly hot, and the air breathes like cotton wool. Through it all the buzzards sit on the fences and low hummocks³, with wings spread fanwise for air. There is no end to them, and they smell to heaven. Their heads droop⁴, and all their communication is a rare, horrid⁵ croak⁶.  
The increase of wild creatures is in proportion to the things they feed upon: the more carrion⁷ the more buzzards. The end of the third successive dry year bred them beyond belief. The first year quail⁸ mated sparingly; the second year the wild oats matured no seed; the third, cattle died in their tracks with their heads towards the stopped watercourses. And that year the scavengers were as black as the plague all across the mesa and up the treeless, tumbled hills. On clear days they betook themselves to the upper air, where they hung motionless for hours. That year there were vultures among them, distinguished¹⁰ by the white patches under the wings. All their offensiveness notwithstanding, they have a stately flight. They must also have what pass for good qualities among themselves, for they are social, not to say clannish¹¹.
 
It is a very squalid tragedy,—that of the dying brutes¹² and the scavenger⁹ birds. Death by starvation is slow. The heavy-headed, rack-boned cattle totter¹³ in the fruitless trails; they stand for long, patient intervals¹⁴; they lie down and do not rise. There is fear in their eyes when they are first stricken, but afterward¹⁵ only intolerable weariness. I suppose the dumb creatures know nearly as much of death as do their betters, who have only the more imagination. Their even-breathing submission¹⁶ after the first agony is their tribute to its inevitableness. It needs a nice discrimination to say which of the basket-ribbed cattle is likest to afford the next meal, but the scavengers make few mistakes. One stoops to the quarry¹⁷ and the flock follows.
 
Cattle once down may be days in dying. They stretch out their necks along the ground, and roll up their slow eyes at longer intervals. The buzzards have all the time, and no beak¹⁸ is dropped or talon¹⁹ struck until the breath is wholly passed. It is doubtless the economy of nature to have the scavengers by to clean up the carrion, but a wolf at the throat would be a shorter agony than the long stalking and sometime perchings of these loathsome²⁰ watchers. Suppose now it were a man in this long-drawn, hungrily spied upon distress²¹! When Timmie O'Shea was lost on Armogosa Flats for three days without water, Long Tom Basset found him, not by any trail, but by making straight away for the points where he saw buzzards stooping. He could hear the beat of their wings, Tom said, and trod on their shadows, but O'Shea was past recalling what he thought about things after the second day. My friend Ewan told me, among other things, when he came back from San Juan Hill, that not all the carnage of battle turned his bowels²² as the sight of slant²³ black wings rising flockwise before the burial squad²⁴.
 
There are three kinds of noises buzzards make,—it is impossible to call them notes,—raucous and elemental. There is a short croak of alarm, and the same syllable²⁵ in a modified tone to serve all the purposes of ordinary conversation. The old birds make a kind of throaty chuckling²⁶ to their young, but if they have any love song I have not heard it. The young yawp in the nest a little, with more breath than noise. It is seldom one finds a buzzard's nest, seldom that grown-ups find a nest of any sort; it is only children to whom these things happen by right. But by making a business of it one may come upon them in wide, quiet canons, or on the lookouts²⁷ of lonely, table-topped mountains, three or four together, in the tops of stubby trees or on rotten cliffs well open to the sky.
 
It is probable that the buzzard is gregarious²⁸, but it seems unlikely from the small number of young noted²⁹ 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 foraging³⁰ that the parents, full of a crass³¹ and simple pride, make their indescribable chucklings of gobbling, gluttonous³² delight. The little ones would be amusing as they tug³³ and tussle³⁴, if one could forget what it is they feed upon.
 
One never comes any nearer to the vulture's nest or nestlings than hearsay³⁵. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold enough, it seems, to do killing³⁶ 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 raven³⁷, 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 butt³⁸ of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was another with the children, but an arrant³⁹ thief. The raven will eat most things that come his way,—eggs and young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even, lizards⁴⁰ and grasshoppers⁴¹, which he catches cleverly; and whatever he is about, let a coyote trot⁴² 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 lair⁴³ for killing, in the country of the carrion crows, but looks up first to see where they may be gathering⁴⁴. It is a sufficient occupation for a windy morning, on the lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of them eying each other furtively⁴⁵, 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 ravens⁴⁶, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.
 
Probably we never fully⁴⁷ credit the interdependence of wild creatures, and their cognizance of the affairs of their own kind. When the five coyotes that range the Tejon from Pasteria to Tunawai planned a relay race to bring down an antelope⁴⁸ strayed from the band, beside myself to watch, an eagle swung down from Mt. Pinos, buzzards materialized out of invisible ether, and hawks⁵⁰ came trooping like small boys to a street fight. Rabbits sat up in the chaparral and cocked their ears, feeling themselves quite safe for the once as the hunt swung near them. Nothing happens in the deep wood that the blue jays are not all agog⁵¹ to tell. The hawk⁴⁹ follows the badger⁵², the coyote the carrion crow, and from their aerial stations the buzzards watch each other. What would be worth knowing is how much of their neighbor's affairs the new generations learn for themselves, and how much they are taught of their elders.
 
So wide is the range of the scavengers that it is never safe to say, eyewitness⁵³ to the contrary, that there are few or many in such a place. Where the carrion is, there will the buzzards be gathered together, and in three days' journey you will not sight another one. The way up from Mojave to Red Butte is all desertness, affording no pasture and scarcely a rill of water. In a year of little rain in the south, flocks and herds⁵⁴ were driven to the number of thousands along this road to the perennial⁵⁵ pastures of the high ranges. It is a long, slow trail, ankle deep in bitter dust that gets up in the slow wind and moves along the backs of the crawling cattle. In the worst of times one in three will pine and fall out by the way. In the defiles⁵⁶ of Red Rock, the sheep piled up a stinking⁵⁷ lane; it was the sun smiting⁵⁸ by day. To these shambles⁵⁹ came buzzards, vultures, and coyotes from all the country round, so that on the Tejon, the Ceriso, and the Little Antelope there were not scavengers enough to keep the country clean. All that summer the dead mummified in the open or dropped slowly back to earth in the quagmires⁶⁰ of the bitter springs. Meanwhile from Red Rock to Coyote Holes, and from Coyote Holes to Haiwai the scavengers gorged⁶¹ and gorged.
 
The coyote is not a scavenger by choice, preferring his own kill, but being on the whole a lazy dog, is apt to fall into carrion eating because it is easier. The red fox and bobcat, a little pressed by hunger, will eat of any other animal's kill, but will not ordinarily touch what dies of itself, and are exceedingly shy of food that has been man-handled.
 
Very clean and handsome, quite belying⁶² his relationship in appearance, is Clark's crow, that scavenger and plunderer⁶³ of mountain camps. It is permissible⁶⁴ to call him by his common name, "Camp Robber:" he has earned it. Not content with refuse, he pecks open meal sacks, filches⁶⁵ whole potatoes, is a gormand for bacon, drills holes in packing cases, and is daunted⁶⁶ by nothing short of tin. All the while he does not neglect to vituperate the chipmunks⁶⁷ and sparrows that whisk off crumbs⁶⁹ of comfort from under the camper's feet. The Camp Robber's gray coat, black and white barred wings, and slender bill, with certain tricks of perching, accuse him of attempts to pass himself off among woodpeckers; but his behavior is all crow. He frequents the higher pine belts, and has a noisy strident call like a jay's, and how clean he and the frisk-tailed chipmunks keep the camp! No crumb⁶⁸ or paring or bit of eggshell goes amiss.
 
High as the camp may be, so it is not above timberline, it is not too high for the coyote, the bobcat, or the wolf. It is the complaint of the ordinary camper that the woods are too still, depleted⁷⁰ of wild life. But what dead body of wild thing, or neglected game untouched by its kind, do you find? And put out offal away from camp over night, and look next day at the foot tracks where it lay.
 
Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. Being so well warned beforehand, it is a very stupid animal, or a very bold one, that cannot keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is the economy of nature, but with it all there is not sufficient account taken of the works of man. There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor.