FALC0NID2E : VULTVUES, FALCONS, HAWKS, ETC. 



519 



plumage witli ago are great, and render tlie determination of the species perplexing — the more 

 so sitice purely individual, and somewhat climatic, color- variations, and such special conditions 

 as melanism, are very frequent. The modes of nesting are various; the eggs as a rule are 

 blotclied, and not so nearly spherical as those of owls. The food is exclusively of an animal 

 nature, though endlessly varied ; the refuse of the stomach is ejected in a ball by the mouth. 

 The voice is loud and harsh. As a rule, the birds of prey are not strictly migratory, though 

 many of them change their abode with much regularity. Their mode of life renders them 

 usually non-gregarious, excepting, however, the vultures and vulture-like hawks, which con- 

 gregate where carrion is plenty, quite like the American Cathartides. There are upwards (»f 

 300 species or good geographical races, justly referable to about 50 full genera, and divisible 

 into two families — Falconidce and Pandionidce. 



31. Family FALCONID^ : Vultures, Falcons, Hawks, Eagles, etc. 



Characters as above, ex- 

 clusive of those marking the 

 fish-hawks, Pandionidce, be- 

 yond. No unexceptionable 

 division of the family having 

 been proposed, and the sub- 

 families being still at issue, it 

 may be best not to materially 

 modify the arrangement pre- 

 Lae a* ^^Bfe^\ ~3|iB||iE^fc:S- sented in the earlier edition 



E~ = r^fe^^^^telfci^ ^Hhk&^^^^^^Cs'*^ ^^ *^^^ work, further tiiau 



• HfiMt^SH^H^HBI^^^^^^^^ to separate Pandionida: from 



Falconidce proper. 



The Old World Vultures 

 form a group standing some- 

 what apart from the rest in 

 many points of superficial 

 structure and habits, though 

 so closely correspondent with 

 ordinary Falconidce, and es- 

 pecially with Buteonince, in 

 all essential respects, that 

 they can form at most a sub- 

 family Vnlturince (fig. 363.) 

 They have nothing to do with the American Vultures (suborder Cathartides), with which they 

 have been wrongly united in a family Vulturidce. They are a small group of some six genera 

 and about twelve species, of which the most decidedly raptorial is the bearded griffin, Gypaetus 

 barhatiis; other characteristically " vulturine" forms being Vtdtur monachus, Otogyps auricu- 

 laris, Gyps fulvus, Neophron percnopterus, and Gypohierax angolensis. 



The South American genera, Micrastur and Herpetotheres, are each described as being 

 so peculiar as to form a group of supergeneric value, comparable with those termed subfamilies 

 in the present work. Their relationships are with Falconince. (Ridgway.) 



The North American Falconidce with which we have here to do fall in several groups, 

 which I shall call subfamilies, without insisting upon their taxonomic rank, or raising the 

 question whether the family at large is divisible in this manner. These groups are six in 

 number : 1. Cvrdnce, harriers ; 2. Milvince, kites ; 3. Acdpitrince, hawks ; 4. Falconinae, 



Fig. 363. —The Vulture's banquet; illustrating subfamily Vulturince of 

 family Falconidce, not represented in America. (From Michelet.j 



