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Turkey Vulture — Part 2
Images coming soon.
As night approaches, one buzzard after another flies toward favorite perches in the trees, preferably dead ones, and settles, with much flapping of wings, on the middle branches; then stretching its body and walking along the roost like a turkey, until it arrives at the chosen spot, it hisses or grunts through its nostrils at the next arrival, whose additional weight frequently snaps the dead branch and compels a number of the great birds to repeat the prolonged process of settling to sleep. But, very frequently, the traveller in the South notices buzzards perched, like dark spectres, on the chimneys of houses, at night, especially in winter, in order to warm their sensitive bodies by the rising smoke, and, after a rain, they often spread their wings over the flues to dry their water-soaked feathers. This spread-eagle attitude is also taken, anywhere the bird happens to be, when the sun comes out after a drenching shower.
Without exerting themselves to form a nest, the buzzards seek out a secluded swamp, palmetto "scrub," sycamore grove, or steep and sunny hillside, and deposit from one to three eggs, usually two, in the cavity of a stump, or lay them directly on the ground, under a bush, or on a rock-anywhere, in fact, that necessity urges. Rotten wood is a favorite receptacle, but the angular bricks of ruined chimneys are not disdained. The eggs are of a dull yellowish white, irregularly blotched with chocolate brown markings, chiefly at the larger end. Very rarely eggs are found without these markings. Laying aside, for a time, his slothful ways, the male carefully attends his sitting mate. As a colony of buzzards, when nesting, indulges its offensive defensive action most relentlessly, few, except scientists, care to make a close study of the birds' nesting habits.