[A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World by Charles Darwin]@TWC D-Link book
A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World

CHAPTER IX
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On some occasions I am sure that they do this only for pleasure, but on others, the Chileno countryman tells you that they are watching a dying animal, or the puma devouring its prey.

If the condors glide down, and then suddenly all rise together, the Chileno knows that it is the puma which, watching the carcass, has sprung out to drive away the robbers.

Besides feeding on carrion, the condors frequently attack young goats and lambs; and the shepherd-dogs are trained, whenever they pass over, to run out, and looking upwards to bark violently.
The Chilenos destroy and catch numbers.

Two methods are used; one is to place a carcass on a level piece of ground within an enclosure of sticks with an opening, and when the condors are gorged, to gallop up on horseback to the entrance, and thus enclose them: for when this bird has not space to run, it cannot give its body sufficient momentum to rise from the ground.

The second method is to mark the trees in which, frequently to the number of five or six together, they roost, and then at night to climb up and noose them.


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