1 40 FALCONIFORMES CHAP. 



Columbia, in which the long flat head and neck are bare, smooth, 

 and orange-coloured, the bill being whitish and the irides carmine. 

 The plumage is dull black with a whitish wing-band, due to the 

 margins of the greater coverts and secondaries ; lanceolate feathers 

 form a basal ruff round the neck, and extend over the lower parts. 

 The habits are similar to those of the foregoing, but the loose 

 nest of sticks, placed in cavities of trees or crags, contains one 

 rough greenish-white egg. The genus Rhinogryphus or Cathartes 

 (" Turkey-Buzzard ") includes E. aura, of temperate and tropical 

 America, reaching to Tierra del Fuego and the Falklands, in 

 which the head and upper neck are naked, smooth, and crimson ; 

 and R. burrovianus, found from Mexico to Brazil, where they are 

 orange and the nape is feathered ; the yellow-headed R. perniger, 

 of Amazonia, being hardly separable. All are black with whitish 

 bill, red irides, and a tuft of bristles in front of the eye ; but 

 the first has brown-margined feathers and metallic sheen above. In 

 common with Catharista, they have the cere very long. During 

 the day-time these quarrelsome scavengers, ubiquitous but neces- 

 sary, haunt the house-tops and roadways of towns and villages, 

 whence they retire at night to groves or forests in company ; other- 

 wise their habits are those of Vultures generally. They have been 

 said to pair for life, while they deposit two whitish eggs with red- 

 brown and lilac markings in some hollow of a crag, tree, or log, often 

 on or near the ground, adding little, if any, bedding. Catharista 

 atratus, the " Carrion Crow " or Black Vulture, which ranges from 

 Argentina and Chili to the West Indies and Carolina, and 

 occasionally further north, is most plentiful near the coast ; the 

 fearless demeanour, flight, manner of feeding, nesting habits and 

 eggs, resembling those of Turkey-Buzzards, though the wing- 

 action is more laboured, and the gait shuffling. Audubon says 

 that the males strut and gesticulate like Turkeys when court- 

 ing, while incubation lasts about three weeks. The colour is 

 black, the naked head being dusky and the upper neck some- 

 what corrugated ; the bill is blackish with light tip, the irides 

 are brown. 



Fossils referred to this Family are met with in North and 

 South America, 1 



The points wherein the Cathartae differ from the Accipitres 



1 Check-List N. Amer. Birds, 1895, p. 344 ; Moreno and Mercerat, An. Mus. La 

 Plata, Pal. Argent, i. 1891, pp. 67-69, pis. xviii.-xx. See also Dryornis (p. 44 supra}. 



