Like other vultures, the food of this species is carrion or dead fish; but he will follow after wounded deer and other animals, and commence devouring them as soon as they have dropped; and a score of these birds will devour the carcass of a deer, or even of a horse or mule, in about one hour's time, leaving nothing but a well-cleaned skeleton! While eating, they are strong enough and bold enough to keep at a distance wolves, dogs, and all such animals as may attempt to share with them.
"Perhaps no bird of the vulture species is so shy and wary as this one.
Except when he is gorged with eating, he will never allow the hunter to approach within shot; and even then, his thick heavy plumage renders him most difficult to be killed.

His wings are full and long, and his flight is most graceful and easy, not unlike that of his congener the turkey-buzzard.
"I have said," continued Lucien, "that naturalists make out five species of American vultures.

The remaining two, the turkey-buzzard and black vulture, or, as he is sometimes called, the `carrion-crow,' we have already had before us; but, I believe, there are more than five species on the continent of America.

There is a bird in Guayana called the `gavilucho,' which I believe to be a vulture differing from all these; and, moreover, I do not think that the `red-headed gallinazo' of South America is the same as the turkey-buzzard of the north.

He is, more probably, a distinct species of _cathartes_; for, although he resembles the turkey-buzzard in shape and size, his plumage appears to me of a purer black, and the skin of his head, neck, and legs, of a much more vivid red--having an appearance as if these parts had been painted.