FALCONID^ : VULTUBES, FALCONS, HAWKS, ETC. 



519 



plumage with age are great, and render the determination of the species perplexing — the more 

 so since purely individual, and somewhat climatic, color-variations, and sucli special conditions 

 as melanism, are very frequent. The modes of nesting are various ; the eggs as a rule are 

 blotched, and not so nearly spherical as those of owls. The food is exclusively of an animal 

 ■nature, though endlessly varied ; the refuse of the stomach is ejected in a ball by the mouth. 

 The voice is loud and harsh.. As a rule, the birds of prey are not strictly migratory, though 

 many of them change their abode with much regularity. Their mode of life renders them 

 usually non-gregarious, excepting, however, the vultures and vulture-like hawks, which con- 

 gregate where carrion is plenty, quite like the American Catha/rtides. There are upwards of 

 300 species or good geographical races, justly referable to about 50 full genera, and divisible 

 into two families — Ealconidm and PanMonidm. 



31. Family FALCONID^ : Vultures, Falcons, Hawks, Eagles, etc. 



Characters as above, ex- 

 clusive of those marking the 

 flsh -hawks, Pandionidee, be- 

 yond. No unexceptionable 

 division of the family having 

 been proposed, and the sub- 

 families being still at issue, it 

 may be best not to materially 

 modify the arrangement pre- 

 sented in the earlier edition 

 of this work, further than 

 to separate Pandionidm from 

 FakomidtB proper. 



The OU World Vultures 

 form a group standing some- 

 what apart from the rest ia 

 many points of superficial 

 structure and habits, though 

 so closely correspondent with 

 ordinary Falconidce, and es- 

 pecially with Buteonmee, in 

 all essential respects, that 

 they can form at most a sub- 

 family VulturiniB (fig. 363.) 

 They have nothing to do with the American Vultures (suborder Cathartides), with which they 

 have been wrongly united in a family VuUuridce. They are a small group of some six genera 

 and about twelve species, of which the most decidedly raptorial is the bearded griflSn, Gypaetu» 

 barbatus; other characteristically " vulturine" forms being VuUur monachus, Otogyps auricu- 

 laris, Gyps fulvus, Neophron percnopterus, and Gypohierax angolensis. 



The South American genera, Mlerastur and Herpetotheres, are each described as being 

 so peculiar as to form a group of supergeneric value, comparable with those termed subfamilies 

 in the present work. Their relationships are with Falconinm. (Ridgway.) 



The North American Falconidce- with which we have here to do fall in several groups, 

 which I shall call subfamilies, without insisting upon their taxonomic rank, or raising the 

 question whether the family at large is divisible in this manner. These groups are six in 

 number : 1. Cvrdnee, harriers ; 2. Milvince, kites ; 3. Acapitrince, hawks ; 4. Falconince, 



Fig. 363. —The Vulture's banquet; llluatrating subramily Vulturinw ot 

 family Falconidw, not representeii in America. (From Michelet.) 



