AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 
DIV. I. AVES TERRESTllES. LAND BIllDS. 
ORDERI. ACCIPITRES. RAPACIOUS. 
Genus I. VULTUR * VULTURES. 
Species I. VULTUR AURA. 
TURKEY VULTURE, or TURKEY-BUZZARD. 
[Plate LXXV. Fig. 1.] 
Vultur aura, Linn". Sijst. ed. 10, torn, i., p. 86, 4 — Lid. Orn. p. 4, No. 8 — Vieillot, 
Ois. de I' Am. Sept. i., p. 25, pi. 2, lji.s. — Carrion Crow, Slo.ane, .Jam. ii., p. 294, 
tab. 254. — Carrion Vtilture, Lath. Gen. Syn. i., p. 9. — Le Vaulonr du BrSsil, 
Briss. I., p. 468. — Turlcey-Buzzard, Catesby, Car. i., p. 6. — Bartkam's Travels, 
p. 289. — ■Cozcaquaauhili, Clavigero, Hint. Mex. i., p. 47, English translation. — 
American Vidture, Suaiv, Gen. Zool. vii., p. 36. 
Tins species is well known throughout the United States, but is most 
numerous in the southern section of the union. In the northern and 
middle states it is partially migratory, the greater part retiring to the 
south on the approach of cold weather. But numbers remain all the 
winter in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey ; particularly in the 
vicinity of the large rivers, and the ocean, which afford a supply of food 
at all seasons. 
In New Jersey,t the Turkey-buzzard hatches in May, the deep re- 
cesses of the solitary swamps of that state affording situations well suited 
* This genus has been divided into several genera, by modern ornithologists. 
Temniinck adopts the four following : 1. Vultur. (Illiger). 2. Cathartes. (Illiger). 
3. Gi/paeius. (Storr). 4. Gy2)ogeranus. (Illiger). The two following species 
belong to the second of these, the genus Cathartes of Illiger. No true Vulture iu 
the present restricted acceptation of that genus has been found in America. 
f The author mentions New Jersey in particular, as in that state he has visited 
the breeding places of the Turkey-buzzard, and can therefore speak with certainty 
of the fact. Pennsylvania, it is more than probable, affords situations equally 
attractive, which are also tenanted by this Vulture, for hatching and rearing its 
young. 
