TURKEY VULTURE. 3 



shambles. They also watch the emptying of the scavengers' 

 carts in the suburbs, where, in company with the still more 

 domestic Black Vultures, they search out their favorite morsels 

 amidst dust, filth, and rubbish of all descriptions. Bits of 

 cheese, of meat, fish, or anything sufficiently foetid, and easy of 

 digestion, is greedily sought after, and eagerly eyed. When 

 the opportunity offers they eat with gluttonous voracity, and 

 fill themselves in such a manner as to be sometimes incapa- 

 ble of rising from the ground. They are accused at times 

 of attacking young pigs and lambs, beginning their assault by 

 picking out the eyes. Mr. Waterton, however, while at Dem- 

 erara watched them for hours together amidst reptiles of all 

 descriptions, but they never made any attack upon them. He 

 even killed lizards and frogs and put them in their way, but 

 they did not appear to notice them until they attained the 

 putrid scent. So that a more harmless animal, living at all 

 upon flesh, is not in existence, than the Turkey Vulture. 



At night they roost in the neighboring trees, but, I believe, 

 seldom in flocks like the Black kind. In winter they some- 

 times pass the night in numbers on the roofs of the houses in 

 the suburbs of the Southern cities, and appear particularly 

 desirous of taking advantage of the warmth which they dis- 

 cover to issue from the chimneys. Here, when the sun shines, 

 they and their black relatives, though no wise social, may be 

 observed perched in these conspicuous places basking in the 

 feeble rays, and stretching out their dark wings to admit the 

 warmth directly to their chilled bodies. And when not en- 

 gaged in acts of necessity, they amuse themselves on fine clear 

 days, even at the coolest season of the year, by soaring, in 

 companies, slowly and majestically into the higher regions of 

 the atmosphere ; rising gendy, but rapidly, in vast spiral circles, 

 they sometimes disappear beyond the thinnest clouds. They 

 practise this lofty flight particularly before the commencement 

 of thunder-storms, when, elevated above the war of elements, 

 they float at ease in the ethereal space with outstretched wings, 

 making no other apparent effort than the light balloon, only 

 now and then steadying their sailing pinions as they spread 



