The Goal of the Wise

The page is richly illustrated with birds in the margins and between columns. Left margin: Two black corvids (crows/ravens); a group of four small birds; a blue peacock, a brown pheasant, and a small starling; three types of pigeons or doves (labeled 'facha', 'turtur', and 'columbuz'); and at the bottom, two large brown speckled ground birds (bustards). Right margin: A green woodpecker (labeled 'picus'); a black crow; a smaller black songbird; two crows scavenging a red carcass (labeled 'cornices'); a blue bird; and a black bird standing on a green mound.

Others scratch with their feet and with their beak, looking above the ground and below the ground for those things which they find above the ground and below the ground, such as genera of jackdaws, quail, crows, and those which are similar in their manner and ... ? entirely, such as the manner of magpies of magpies and starlings and those similar to these. Magpies truly have many other ways of obtaining food. Such terrestrial birds have [different] natures of flight, as the aforementioned report. Truly, some of those which they use most often have diverse terrestrial paths. For some use more of one food than others. Some use more often ... ? others flesh, and others only flesh. For those which use more of one [food] than flesh, some eat more often grain, fruits of trees and bushes, caterpillars, and other things convenient for them, such as partridges, pheasant starlings, starling peacocks, strangle quail, and things of this sort, whatever are intermediate in flight; and also some of these are of complete flight, using the same foods, such as the manner of pigeons and facha turtle dove dove turtle doves and the facha a type of pigeon which are larger than pigeons and larger than turtle doves, and bustards, and field ducks which are in color and form of limbs and in many things similar to bustards, but much—

smaller, and although others are many [and] smaller in quantity, neither female nor others, but they eat fruits, but ants ... ? manners ... ? of worms, such as are species of woodpeckers. Some truly, from the terrestrial animals, have their sustenance from trees, namely the fruits of trees and the small worms which are upon the trees. Some from these [eat] seeds, namely of herbs, and the small animals which are upon the herbs. Some [eat] from the lands, seeds, leaves, and buds upon the ground, [and] worms ... ? Some truly have their food from all these indifferently. Those, however, that eat flesh and other birds indifferently are the genera of crows and ... ? the manner of magpies, and the flesh with which they feed is from carcasses, such as residues of animals killed by birds or by men or by wild beasts. For rarely do they snatch a bird or a small animal, unless perhaps one is infirm or weak; and birds of this sort, in the lack of flesh, graze on grain, fruits, worms, locusts, caterpillars, and similar things which they acquire from above the ground or from below the ground. Those truly that eat only flesh are in three modes. For they never eat flesh from their own capture, but always [from] carcasses—