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 gently, 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 
