AVES FALCONID^. 563 



considered and probably continues till early in December according to 

 the latitude. They make nests of sticks and coarse material generally in 

 trees but also in bushes and on the shelves on the faces of cliffs. From 

 two to four eggs are laid and but a single brood is reared each year. 



This is the bird generally meant when the term carraucJia is used and 

 the accounts in Mr. Hatcher's "Narrative" will give some idea of its 

 abundance and boldness as well as its fearless association with man, as he 

 encountered it at the different camps he made in Patagonia ; the point of 

 view of other writers is also appended in this connection from widely 

 separate points in the range of these vulture-like hawks. 



O. V. Aplin says of it in Uruguay (Ibis, p. 196, 1894) : "Common, but 

 not abundant, becoming more so, however, in autumn when the merinos 

 begin to lamb. Two fledged young, with wings and tail half-grown, and 

 an t.<g<g also were brought in on the 3d November. On the 26th Novem- 

 ber I saw a bird sitting on its nest in the top of a tala bush on an island 

 in a deep laguna of the Arroyo Grande ; the nest appeared to be formed 

 of sticks and wool. I was informed that they usually breed on the flat 

 tops of rocks and on the ground ; the nests I saw in trees were hung struc- 

 tures. On 7th April I saw five flying together — two of them fighting in 

 the air, uttering harsh croaks, and on the 25th May I saw seven together 

 in the evening." 



Darwin in the Voyage of the Beagle (Birds, pp. 9-1 1, 184), says: 

 "Although abundant on the open plains of this eastern portion of the 

 continent, and likewise on the rocky and barren shores of the Pacific, 

 nevertheless it inhabits the borders of the damp and impervious forests of 

 Tierra del Fuego and the broken coast of West Patagonia, even as far 

 south as Cape Horn. The Carranchas (as the Polybonts brasiliensis is 

 called in La Plata), together with the P. ckimango, attend in great num- 

 bers the estancias and slaughtering houses in the neighborhood of the 

 Plata. If an animal dies in the plain, the CatJiartes atnitus or Gallinazo 

 commences the feast, and then these two carrion-feeding hawks pick the 

 bones clean. Although belonging to closely-allied genera, and thus com- 

 monly feeding together, they are far from being friends. When the Car- 

 rancha is quietly seated on the branch of a tree, or on the ground, the 

 Chimango often continues flying backwards and forwards for a long time, 

 up and down in a semicircle, trying each time, at the bottom of the curve, 

 to strike its larger relative. The Carrancha takes little notice, except by 



