160 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



"I think there is no foundation for the belief that this Vulture kills lambs 

 and sickly calves. I have never known such a thing to happen, and have seen 

 many Vultures during lambing time, when there were thousands of young 

 lambs to eat, if the}- had felt disposed to kill any; neither have I noticed 

 them eating dead flesh unless in an advanced state of decomposition." 



Mr. Walter E. Bryant writes me as follows: "My experience has been that 

 the California Vulture is extremely rare now. I doubt if I have ever seen it in 

 its wild state. Many reports of its being common, its breeding, etc., which I 

 have investigated at considerable trouble, time, and expense, have been either 

 the Turkey Buzzard or the Golden Eagle seen on the wing." 



About their nesting habits, nothing but what has already been published is 

 known, and the egg remains one of the rarest in collections, and is likely so to 

 continue. I have not been able to learn whether any have been taken during 

 the past twelve years. 



Dr. Heermann states that a nest of this bird, with young, was discovered in 

 a thicket on the Tuolumne River. It was about 8 feet back from the entrance 

 of a crevice in the rocks, completely surrounded and masked by thick under- 

 brush and trees, and composed of a few loose sticks thrown negligently together 

 He found two other nests of like construction and similarly situated, at the head 

 of Merced River, and in the mountains. From the latter the Indians were in 

 the habit of yearly robbing the young to kill at one of their festivals. 



Mr. Alexander S. Taylor, of Monterey, published a series of papers in a 

 California journal relative to this Vulture. In one of these he mentions 

 that a Mexican ranchero, in hunting among the highest peaks of the Santa 

 Lucia Range, disturbed two pains from their nesting places, and brought away 

 from one a young bird a few days old, and from the other an egg. There 

 was no nest, the eggs having been laid in the hollow of a tall old robles 

 oak, in a steep barranca, near the summit of one of the highest peaks. These 

 birds are said by some hunters to make no nest, but simply to lay their 

 eggs on the ground at the foot of old trees, or on the bare rocks of solitary 

 peaks. Others affirm that they sometimes lay their eggs in old nests of 

 Eagles and Buzzards. Mr. Taylor states that the egg was of a dead, dull 

 white color, and that the surface of the shell was slightly roughened. It was 

 nearly a perfect ellipse in shape, and measured 4.50 inches in length by 

 2.38 inches in diameter (114.3 by 60.45 millimetres). The eggshell held 

 fluid ounces of water. The young Vulture weighed 10 ounces; its skin was 

 of an ochreous yellow, covered with a fine down of dull white. 1 



I have a sketch of this egg before me, drawn by Mr. W. M. Ord, at 

 Monterey, California, in April, 1859. The exact measurements of this draw- 

 ing are 116 by 72 millimetres. They do not correspond with those given in 

 the "History of North American Birds," previously mentioned. On the draw- 

 ing it is stated "color dead white." 



I believe that the mode of nidification of the California Vulture is sim- 



1 History of North American Birds, 1874, Vol. in, p. 342. 



