34 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



cheeks black; rest of head, brownish. They state further (loc. cit.^ 

 p. 364) that the orange-color of the throat and sides of head varies 

 very much, and that when the birds fight around a carcass, the color 

 changes to blood-red of almost the same shade as that of the bird 

 they call the Red-headed Vulture. 



The same writers, under the name C. aura {loc. cit., p. 361), describe 

 the adult birds as having the bare skin of the head and upper neck 

 bright carmine-red, darker at the cere; lora and top of head some- 

 times whitish. Young birds, they state, have the bare skin of the head 

 and neck more or less blue or blackish. Young in down have a more 

 or less blackish head. 



Our specimens are much blacker than specimens from Venezuela, 

 the West Indies, and Mexico, with dark purplish reflections and no 

 brownish edges to the feathers. We have seen four of Cherrie's 

 specimens in the Brooklyn Museum, two of which he calls C. pernigra 

 (Sharpe) and two C. urubitinga Pelzeln. We cannot see any differ- 

 ence in coloration between these four birds and specimens of C. aura 

 aura Linne in the M. C. Z. The Surinam birds, however, are much 

 darker than any of these, and represent a different form. 



We are at a loss in regard to the bird with the feathered nape, which 

 Cherrie (Sci. bull. Mus. Brooklyn, inst., 1916, 2, p. 338) lists under the 

 name Cathartes urubitinga Pelzeln, and which he and others regard 

 as a distinct species. In our specimen with the orange and blue head, 

 the feathers of the neck do not extend up to the nape. We have a 

 strong impression that this feathering of the nape is a sign of imma- 

 turity. A young bird of C. a. septentrionalis Wied in the M. C. Z., from 

 Miami, Florida, shows the feathers of the back of the neck well up 

 to the nape, running diagonally up the sides of the neck, in much the 

 same manner as in Cherrie's two specimens of C. urubitinga. 



We note also that a large bird from Bahia in the M. C. Z. does not 

 differ from a Falkland Islands specimen with which we have compared 

 it. Hence the southern form, C. a. jota (Molina) {= falklandica 

 Sharpe) apparently ranges as far north as Bahia on the eastern coast 

 of South America. 



