Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/77

 inclined to multiply as those more constantly resident in the forests, perceiving the diminution of number during the breeding season, and having remarked that many individuals known to me by particular marks made on them, and a special cast of countenance, were positively constant residents of town. The Vultur Aura is by no means so numerous as the atratus. I have seldom seen more than from twenty-five to thirty together; when, on the contrary, the latter are frequently associated to the number of an hundred.

The Vultur Aura is a more retired bird in habits, and more inclined to feed on dead game, snakes, lizards, frogs, and the dead fish that frequently are found about the sand-flats of rivers and borders of the sea-shore; is more cleanly in its appearance; and, as you will see by the difference in the drawings of both species, a neater and better formed bird. Its flight is also vastly superior in softness and elegance, requiring but a few flaps of its large wings to raise itself from the ground; after which it will sail for miles by merely turning either on one side or the other, and using its tail so slowly, to alter its course, that a person looking at it, whilst elevated and sailing, would be inclined to compare it to a machine fit to perform just a certain description of evolutions. The noise made by the vultures through the air, as they glide obliquely towards the earth, is often as great as that of our largest hawks, when falling on their prey; but they never reach the ground in this manner, always checking when about 100 yards high, and going several rounds, to examine well the spot they are about to alight on. The Vultur Aura cannot bear cold weather well; the few who, during the heat of summer, extend their excursions to the middle or northern states, generally return at the approach of winter; and I believe also, that very few of these birds breed east of the pine swamps of New Jersey. They are much attached to particular roosting-trees, and I know will come to them every night from a great distance. On alighting on these, each of them, anxious for a choice of place, creates always a general disturbance; and often, when quite dark, their hissing is heard in token of this inclination for supremacy. These roosting-trees of the Buzzards are generally in deep swamps, and mostly in high dead cypress trees; frequently, however, they roost with the carrion crows (Vultur attratus), and then it is on the largest dead timber of our fields, not unfrequently near the houses. Sometimes, also, this bird will roost close to the body of a thickly leaved tree: in such a position I have killed several