BUZZARD 



67 



contains, among many others, the 



Diurnal Birds-of-Pre}', which 



species usually known as the Common Buzzard, Buteo vulgaris, of 



Leach, though the English epithet is nowadays hardly applicable. 



The name Buzzard, however, belongs quite as rightfully to the 



birds called in books " Harriers," and by it one of them, the 



Moor-Buzzard, Circus xruginosus, 



is still known in such places as 



it inhabits. " Puttock " is also 



another name used in some parts 



of the country, but perhaps is 



rather a synonym of the Kite, 



Milvus idinus. Though ornitho- 



losical Avriters are almost unani- 



mous in distinguishing the Buz- 

 zards as a group from the Eagles, 

 the grounds usually assigned for 

 their separation are but slight, and the diagnostic character that 

 can be best trusted is proljably that in the former, as the 

 figure shews, the bill is decurved from the base, Avhile in the 



Buzzard. (After Swainson.) 



a 

 is 

 a 



its length 



straight 



third of 

 short and round, Avhile 

 general Avay Buzzards 



The head, 



in the Eagles 



are smaller than 



are several exceptions to this statement. 



latter it is for about 

 too, in the Buzzards 

 it is elongated. In 

 Eagles, though there 

 and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if 

 not all of the Buzzards, about which anything of the kind is 

 with cei'tainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, 

 while the Eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The 

 Buzzards are line -looking birds, but are slow and heavy of 

 •Hight, so that in the old days of falconry they were regarded 

 with infinite scorn, and hence in common English to call a 

 man a "buzzard" is to denounce him as stupid. Their food 

 consists of small mammals, young birds, reptiles, amphibians, 

 a.nd insects — particularly beetles — and thus they never could have 

 been very injurious to the game-preserver, though they have fallen 

 under his ban, if indeed they were not really his friends ; but at 

 the present day they are so scarce that in this country their elTect, 

 whatever it may be, is inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the 

 Avhole world with the exception of the Australian Region, and have 

 been split into many genera by systematists. In the British 

 Islands we have two species, one (the i>. vulgaris already mentioned) 

 resident, and now almost confined to a few of the wilder districts ; 

 the other the Rough-legged Buzzard, Arehibuteo lagopus, an irregular 

 winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in larse bands from the north 

 of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being 

 feathered down to the toes. The Honey-Buzzard, Fernis aykorus, 



a summer-visitor from the south, 



and breeding, 



or attempting to 



