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Black Vulture — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Most abundant in the western division of the Gulf states and above the great plains, the numbers of this bird-let it be recorded-nowhere seem to have diminished, since it feeds almost exclusively on snakes, lizards, and the larger insects such as locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers, and never on other birds. Even the dullest mind recognizes it as harmless and beneficent. Naturally a bird so little persecuted shows no great fear of man. Its shrill, penetrating wee-wee-wee has been uttered in the very ears of a picnic party within sight of a huge hotel in Minnesota.
But when the nesting season arrives, these kites seek out uninhabited, inaccessible regions where it is well worth while to follow them, however, since their flight, always charming, dashing, and elegant, now assumes matchless perfection impossible to describe. Even their wooing is done on the wing. Several pairs may build in a neighborhood, which is usually a dense wood near water that attracts their prey within easy reach; and at the top of some tall, straight tree, anywhere from sixty to one hundred and forty feet from the ground, an irregular nest of large loose twigs, lined or unlined with moss, may likely as not rise from the foundations of one used the previous year. From two to four white eggs, boldly spotted or blotched with different shades of brown, are laid any time from April to June, according to the latitude. It is thought both kites take turns at the incubating, which is closely attended to; or at least the male is particularly devoted to his sitting mate, always being seen near by. In leaving the nest a bird rises upward suddenly as if sent up by a spring, instead of flying sidewise as most birds do; and in alighting it first poises itself directly above the eggs, then descends on apparently motionless wings so softly and lightly the large body might be a single feather dropping from the sky.