BLACK VULTURE 31 



the brooding bird became alarmed at our approach, and we could 

 hear her flapping to scramble up and escape at the elevated entrance." 



J. J. Carroll, of Houston, Tex., says in a letter that he has seen many 

 nestings in standing trees hollow at the base; "sometimes the eggs 

 were at a level not far below the entrance, but I have known the eggs 

 to be placed on the ground in the hollow, with the entrance six or eight 

 feet up. Usually these entrance holes are not higher than that from 

 the ground, but I have seen them as high as fifteen feet." A hollow 

 in a standing tree sufficiently large even if at a considerable height 

 above the ground might be used by this bird, and I was able to find 

 one such record. Charles E. Stockard (1904) found the eggs of the 

 black vulture "about sixty feet up in a huge poplar tree which stood 

 in a cotton field that had been cleared for five years. In the crotch 

 of this tree there w^as a large hollow running down about three feet 

 and slightly sheltered above by the inclination of one of the limbs that 

 formed the crotch. The eggs were deposited on the floor of this 

 hollow. This was the only nest of this species that was observed 

 more than a few feet from the ground. It is probable that the birds 

 occupied this tree while it stood in the woods and when the land was 

 cleared in 1897 the tree, being a large one, was deadened and left 

 standing and the birds continued to use it as a nesting site." This 

 is, of course, a very exceptional case. A still more unusual site is 

 recorded by O. E. Baynard (1910), who in Florida found a black 

 vulture incubating its eggs in a Ward's heron's nest in a cypress 

 tree some 90 feet above the ground. As he collected the eggs, there 

 is no doubt about the identity. 



Where hollow stumps and standing trees occur, they seem to be fav- 

 orite nesting sites for this bird, but elsewhere the eggs are laid on the 

 ground, often in dense thickets of palmetto, yucca, tall sawgrass, or 

 small trees, although sometimes exposed to the full light of day in the 

 open. The shade of a partly fallen tree trunk is another favorite site, 

 as well as the shade of a rock or under boulders, and, especially in 

 limestone country where caves abound, the eggs are often laid in a 

 shallow cave on a cliff side. 



In its nesting habits the black vulture is often gregarious, as shown 

 in the following description by Walter Hoxie (1886) of the nesting on 

 Buzzard Island, 3 miles from Beaufort, S. C, where a dozen or more 

 pairs nested yearly : 



There is never the slightest attempt at forming a nest, or even excavating a 

 hollow. The eggs are laid far in under the intertwining stems of the yucca, 

 and in the semi-shadows are quite hard to be seen. The parent birds, however, 

 have a habit of always following the same path in leaving and approaching 

 their precious charge, and after a little experience I learned to distinguish these 

 traces so well that I seldom failed to follow them up and secure the coveted 

 specimens. This track is seldom, if ever, straight. It winds under and around 



