110 NESTS AND EGGS OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



. . c 



454. Turkey Buzzard — cathartes aura. Creamy or yellowish-white, 

 variously blotched and splashed with different shades of brown and usually 

 showing other spots of lavender and purplish-drab; usually two in number, 

 sometimes only one; size about 2.73 by 1.87. The common Turkey Buz- 

 zard inhabits the United States and adjoining British Provinces from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, south through Central and most of South America, 

 and is resident north to about 40°. ' Every farmer knows it to be an 

 industrious scavenger, devouring at all times the putrid or decomposing 

 flesh of carcasses. It is essentially gregarious, not only flying and feeding 

 in company, but resorting to the same spot to roost; breeding also in 

 communities and sometimes by single pairs; depositing its eggs 

 on the ground, on rocks, or in hollow logs and stumps, usually in 

 thick woods or a sycamore grove, in the bend or fork of a stream. In a 

 place like the latter a colony of about ten pair made their breeding grounds 

 on the Olentangy river, Ohio, about one mile from Columbus, in May last 

 (1885), and I secured one fine set of two eggs from a hollow stump. The 

 flight of this Vulture is truly beautiful, and no landscape with its patches 

 of green woods and grassy fields, is perfect without its dignified figure, 

 high in air, moving in round circles; so steady, graceful and easy, and 

 apparently without any effort. It rises from the ground with a single 

 bound, gives a few flaps of its wings and soon begins its gyrations, soaring 

 to immense heights. It is a very silent bird, only uttering a hiss of defiance 

 or warning to its neighbors when feeding, or a low gutteral croak of alarm 

 when flying low overhead. 



455. Black Vulture; Carrion Crow — catharista atrata. Yellowish 

 or creamy white, blotched and spotted with very dark brown and umber; 

 two in number; size about 3.25 by 2. This Vulture is very common along 

 our South Atlantic and Gulf States, and is resident from South Carolina 

 southward ; in many places it is more numerous than the Turkey Buzzard. 

 Its general traits and nesting habits are the same, breeding in hollow logs, 

 decayed trunks of trees, stumps, etc. In the Southern Atlantic cities the 

 Black Vulture is said to be a semi-domestic bird, and even protected by law. 

 Their services as scavengers in removing offal render them valuable and 

 almost a necessity in Southern cities. Several specimens of this Vulture 

 were observed near Madisonville, Ohio, in December, 1876, and a single 

 one was killed January i, 1877, in the same place. Its occurrence in Ohio, 

 or anywhere in the Mississippi Valley north of the Ohio river, has heretofore 

 rested solely on Audubon's account of its range which has been quoted by 

 all subsequent writers. 



Hab. Chiefly South Atlantic and Gulf States; north regularly to North CaroHna, thence straggling to 

 Massachusetts and Maine. 



