TURKEY VULTURE 13 



Thomas H. Jackson (1903), writing of southeastern Pennsylvania, 

 says, "Early in April, with the advent of settled weather, they be- 

 come quite numerous, and at once show an attachment for the old 

 nesting sites, to which they seem to return for many years." 



Louis B. Kalter reports (MS.) a flock of 30, apparently migrants, 

 going westward over Yellow Springs, Ohio, on March 20, 1933, 

 at 4.30 p. m. Dr. O. L. Inman reported to him that "during part 

 of the time they were in sight, they seemed to hold rather a loose 

 formation, when most of them would be going in the same general 

 direction. Then they would break and wheel about for a short time, 

 only to reform their loose formation." 



Dr. F. M. Chapman (1933) made observations at Barro Colorado 

 Island that point to an extensive northbound migration of vultures 

 late in February and March. Large numbers of the birds, several 

 hundred together on one occasion, passed over the island, following 

 the course adopted by kingbirds and barn swallows on their route 

 northward (at this point southwest). He says: "Usually they sailed 

 straight ahead without stopping but at times they circled, though 

 still drifting southward." 



One day they flew over the island at a height of 4,000 to 5,000 

 feet, and on another day, in the morning. Dr. Chapman found a 

 number of vultures collected in trees. "These", he says, "were ap- 

 parently migrating birds which had roosted over night on the island 

 and, becalmed, were waiting for enough wind to resume their flight." 



Wherever these birds were bound — a question impossible to an- 

 swer definitely — Dr. Chapman's observations indicate that the 

 turkey vulture is, to a certain extent, highly migratory and that many 

 individuals, gathered in flocks of considerable size, make a very long 

 journey between their winter quarters and their breeding grounds. 



Nesting. — In any region, no matter how widely it may range, 

 there is a limited number of places in which a bird as large as a 

 turkey vulture can hide its nest. The vulture is a big bird ; it must 

 have room for its nest somewhere either inaccessible to predatory 

 animals or where they cannot easily reach its eggs or young. There 

 is the added danger that the odor of the food may proclaim the 

 whereabouts of the nest after the eggs are hatched and the young 

 birds have to be fed. 



Many situations meet these requirements in some degree, notably 

 on precipitous cliffs, of access only through the air, or in caves or 

 hollow stumps, or in the midst of dense shrubbery where a narrow 

 entrance limits the attack by enemies to one direction. In such 

 locations the vulture lays its eggs on the ground, or on the bare 

 stone of a cliff, or on the rotten chips in a hollow log with little or 

 no attempt to make a nest. 



