slant black wings rising flockwise before the burial squad.

There are three kinds of noises buzzards make,--it is
impossible to call them notes,--raucous and elemental. There is a
short croak of alarm, and the same syllable in a modified tone to
serve all the purposes of ordinary conversation. The old birds
make a kind of throaty chuckling to their young, but if they have
any love song I have not heard it. The young yawp in the nest a
little, with more breath than noise. It is seldom one finds a
buzzard's nest, seldom that grown-ups find a nest of any sort; it
is only children to whom these things happen by right. But
by making a business of it one may come upon them in wide, quiet
canons, or on the lookouts of lonely, table-topped mountains, three
or four together, in the tops of stubby trees or on rotten cliffs
well open to the sky.

It is probable that the buzzard is gregarious, but it seems
unlikely from the small number of young noted at any time that
every female incubates each year. The young birds are easily
distinguished by their size when feeding, and high up in air by the
worn primaries of the older birds. It is when the young go out of
the nest on their first foraging that the parents, full of a crass
and simple pride, make their indescribable chucklings of gobbling,
gluttonous delight. The little ones would be amusing as they tug
and tussle, if one could forget what it is they feed upon.

One never comes any nearer to the vulture's nest or nestlings
than hearsay. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold
enough, it seems, to do killing on their own account when no
carrion is at hand. They dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the