54^ PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



prey. On a fine day a flock may often be seen at a great height ; each 

 bird wheeling round and round in the most graceful evolutions. This is 

 evidently done for sport ; or, perhaps is connected (for a similar habit may 

 sometimes be observed during the breeding season amongst our common 

 rooks) with their matrimonial alliances." 



Hudson in "Idle Days in Patagonia" (pp. 52-53) alludes to the species 

 as follows: "The weather was the worst I had experienced in the country, 

 being piercingly cold, with a violent wind and frequent storms of rain 

 and sleet. The rough, wet boles of the trees rose up tall and straight 

 like black pillars from the rank herbage beneath, and on the higher 

 branches innumerable black vultures [Cathartes atrahts) were perched, 

 waiting all the dreary day long for fair weather to fly abroad in search of 

 food. 



"On the ground this vulture does not appear to advantage, especially 

 when bobbing and jumping about, performing the 'buzzard lope,' when 

 quarreling with his fellows over a carcass ; but when perched aloft, his 

 small naked rugous head and neck and horny curved beak seen well- 

 defined above the broad black surface of the folded wing, he does not 

 show badly. As I had no wish to make a bag of vultures and saw 

 nothing else, I shot nothing." 



Genus CATHARTES Illiger. 



Type. 



of N 



C. aura. 

 C. aura. 



C. aura. 

 C. aura. 



Cathartes, Illiger, Prodr. Syst. Mamm. et Av. p. 236 (181 1 



Sharpe, Hand-list Bds. i. p. 240 (1899). . . . 

 CatharistaWtxW, Analyse, p. 21 (1816 nee auct. recent 

 Rhinogryphus, Ridgw. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, Bds 



A. iii. p. 337 (1874) 



Qinops, Sharpe, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus. i. p. 22 (1874) . 



Geographical Rajige. — The whole of South America ; the Falkland 

 Islands ; Central America ; North America north to southern New Eng- 

 land, on the Eastern Coast, in the interior to the Saskatchewan and on 

 the Pacific Coast to British Columbia. 



Cathartes aura (Linnaeus). 



The Turkey Buzzard, Catesby, Nat. Hist. Carol. I. p. 6, pi. 6 (1730). 

 Vultur aura, Linn. Syst. Nat. I. p. 86 (1758); Vieill. Ois. I'Amer. Sept. 

 pi. 2 bis (1807); Darw. Nat. Voy. Beagle, p. 58 (1882). 



