AMERICAN VULTURES 



(Family CathartidceJ 



Turkey Vulture 



(Cathartes aura) 



Called also : TURKEY BUZZARD 



Length — ^30 inches; wing spread about 6 feet. 



Male and Female — Blackish brown ; wing coverts and linings 

 grayish ; head and neck naked and red, from livid crimson 

 to pale cinnamon, and usually with white specks; base of 

 bill red, and end dead white; feet flesh colored. Head 

 of female covered with grayish brown, fur-like feathers. 

 Young darker than adults; bill and skin of head dark and 

 the latter downy. Nestlings of yellowish white. 



Range — Temperate North America, from Atlantic to Pacific, 

 rarely so far north as British Columbia; southward to Pata- 

 gonia and Falkland Islands. Casual in New England. 



Season — Permanent resident, except at extreme northern limit 

 of range. 



Floating high in air, with never a perceptible movement of 

 its widespread wings, as it circles with majestic, unimpas- 

 sioned grace in a great spiral, this common buzzard of our 

 southern states suggests by its flight the very poetry of motion, 

 while its terrestrial habits of scavenger are surely the very prose 

 of existence. In the air the bird is unsurpassed for grace, as, 

 rising with the wind, with only the slightest motion of its great, 

 flexible, upturned wings, it sails around and around, for hours at a 

 time, at a height of two or three hundred feet ; then descending in 

 a long sweep, rises again with the same calm, effortless soaring 

 that often carries it beyond our sight through the thin, summer 

 clouds. Humboldt recorded that not even the condor reaches 

 greater heights beyond the summits of the Andes than this 

 buzzard, which often joins its South American relative in its 



304 



