"They're in the middle of a swamp now" said Freckles. "Do you suppose
there is any chance of them staying with me chickens? If they do,
they'll be about the queerest I have; but I tell you, sir, I am finding
some plum good ones. There's a new kind over at the mouth of the creek
that uses its wings like feet and walks on all fours. It travels like a
thrashing machine. There's another, tall as me waist, with a bill a
foot long, a neck near two, not the thickness of me wrist and an elegant
color. He's some blue and gray, touched up with black, white, and brown.
The voice of him is such that if he'd be going up and standing beside
a tree and crying at it a few times he could be sawing it square off. I
don't know but it would be a good idea to try him on the gang, sir."
McLean laughed. "Those must be blue herons, Freckles," he said. "And
it doesn't seem possible, but your description of the big black birds
sounds like genuine black vultures. They are common enough in the South.
I've seen them numerous around the lumber camps of Georgia, but I
never before heard of any this far north.
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