Ossifrage: Heb. peres to "break" or "crush", the lammer-geier, or bearded
vulture, the largest of the whole vulture tribe. It was an unclean
bird
(Leviticus 11:13; Deuteronomy 14:12) It is not a gregarious bird, and is found but
rarely in Palestine. "When the other vultures have picked the flesh
off any animal, he comes in at the end of the feast, and swallows the
bones, or breaks them, and swallows the pieces if he cannot otherwise
extract the marrow. The bones he cracks [hence the appropriateness of
the name ossifrage, i.e., "bone-breaker"] by letting them fall on a
rock from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself to
these delicacies, but whenever he has an opportunity will devour
lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by pushing them
over cliffs, when he has watched his opportunity; and he has been
known to attack men while climbing rocks, and dash them against the
bottom. But tortoises and serpents are his ordinary food...No doubt
it was a lammer-geier that mistook the bald head of the poet
AEschylus for a stone, and dropped on it the tortoise which killed
him" (Tristram's Nat. Hist.).
