140 FALCONIFORMES CHAP. 
Columbia, in which the long flat head and neck are bare, smooth, 
and orange-coloured, the bill being whitish and the irides carmine. 
The plumage is dull black with a whitish wing-band, due to the 
margins of the greater coverts and secondaries ; lanceolate feathers 
form a basal rutf round the neck, and extend over the lower parts. 
The habits are similar to those of the foregoing, but the loose 
nest of sticks, placed in cavities of trees or crags, contains one 
rough greenish-white egg. The genus Rhinogryphus or Cathartes 
(“ Turkey-Buzzard”) includes &. aura, of temperate and tropical 
America, reaching to Tierra del Fuego and the Falklands, in 
which the head and upper neck are naked, smooth, and crimson ; 
and &. burrovianus, found from Mexico to Brazil, where they are 
orange and the nape is feathered; the yellow-headed &. perniger, 
of Amazonia, being hardly separable. All are black with whitish 
bill, red irides, and a tuft of bristles in front of the eye; but 
the first has brown-margined feathers and metallic sheen above. In 
common with Catharista, they have the cere very long. During 
the day-time these quarrelsome scavengers, ubiquitous but neces- 
sary, haunt the house-tops and roadways of towns and _ villages, 
whence they retire at night to groves or forests in company ; other- 
wise their habits are those of Vultures generally. They have been 
said to pair for life, while they deposit two whitish eggs with red- 
brown and lilac markings in some hollow of a crag, tree, or log, often 
on or near the ground, adding little, if any, bedding. Catharista 
atratus, the “ Carrion Crow” or Black Vulture, which ranges from 
Argentina and Chili to the West Indies and Carolina, and 
occasionally further north, is most plentiful near the coast; the 
fearless demeanour, flight, manner of feeding, nesting habits and 
egos, resembling those of Turkey-Buzzards, though the wing- 
action is more laboured, and the gait shuffling. Audubon says 
that the males strut and gesticulate like Turkeys when court- 
ing, while incubation lasts about three weeks. The colour is 
black, the naked head being dusky and the upper neck some- 
what corrugated; the bill is blackish with light tip, the irides 
are brown. 
Fossils referred to this Family are met with in North and 
South America.? 
The points wherein the Cathartae differ from the <Accipitres 
1 Check-List N. Amer. Birds, 1895, p. 344 ; Moreno and Mercerat, An. Mus. La 
Plata, Pal. Argent. i. 1891, pp. 67-69, pls. xviii.-xx. See also Dryornis (p. 44 supra). 
