Beaky Buzzard

Beaky Buzzard
Looney Tunes character
Beaky Buzzard in Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
First appearance	Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (July 11, 1942)
Created by	Bob Clampett Friz Freleng Robert McKimson
Voiced by	Kent Rogers (1942–1945) Stan Freberg (1945) Eddie Bartell (1945) Mel Blanc (1950) Rob Paulsen (1990–1994) Jeff Bennett (1997) Joe Alaskey (2003–2005) Jim Cummings (2011–2014)
Information
Species	Turkey vulture
Nationality	American

Beaky Buzzard is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons.

He is a young turkey vulture (a bird commonly called "buzzard" in the United States) with black body feathers and a white tuft around his throat. His neck is long and thin, bending 90 degrees at an enormous Adam's apple. His neck and head are featherless, and his beak is large and yellow or orange, depending on the cartoon. Beaky bears a perpetual goofy grin, and his eyes look eternally half-asleep. He was partly based on Edgar Bergen's puppet Mortimer Snerd.

The character first appeared in the 1942 cartoon Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, directed by Bob Clampett. The cartoon's plot revolves around the hopeless attempts of the brainless buzzard, here called Killer, to catch Bugs Bunny for his domineering Italian mother back at the nest. Beaky's voice was reminiscent of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's character Mortimer Snerd (his in-studio name was in fact "Snerd Bird", bestowed by Bob Clampett himself; he was not named "Beaky" on-screen in this first appearance). The voice itself was provided by voice actor Kent Rogers.

Clampett brought the character back in the 1945 film The Bashful Buzzard, a cartoon that closely mirrors its predecessor, only this time featuring Beaky's hapless hunting (contrasted with warlike formation flying and dive bombing of his brothers) without scenes of him chasing Bugs for food. Rogers reprised his role as the character's voice for the film, but he was killed in a Naval aviation training accident at Pensacola, Florida before finishing all his dialogue, so Stan Freberg was brought in to finish the work (as was Eddie Bartell, according to some sources).