COMMON BUZZARD. I35 



(ieep brown above, while their lower parts are more or 

 less variegated with white. Considerable differences 

 are also produced by the fading and wearing of the 

 feathers, as the period of renewal approaches. 



Habits. — The Buzzard seems somehow, no doubt 

 quite unintentionally on his part, to have incurred the 

 displeasure of ornithologists, few of whom have refrain- 

 ed from applying to him the most opprobrious epithets. 

 Were we to credit all that has been said respecting 

 him, we should take him to be a lazy, s eepy, cowardly 

 fellow, who doses away half his time on some old rotten 

 trunk, and who, even when hungry, cannot be persuad- 

 ed to do more than look about him from his stand, and 

 when some feeble or crippled object comes up, make 

 an undecided plunge after it, or perhaps scramble by 

 the side of a ditch to clutch a sprawling frog, or scratch 

 among cow-dung for beetles and larvae. For my part, 

 I cannot believe all that has been said to his disadvan- 

 tage, and having a kind of natural propensity to side 

 with the weaker party, especially if it be the injured 

 one, as it is almost always sure to be, I shall endeavour 

 to reinstate the Buzzard in that respectability which 

 Nature has accorded to him. 



In the first place, then, the Buzzard greatly resem- 

 bles the golden eagle in his mode of flying — much more 

 certainly than the noble peregrine, or the ignoble kite. 

 Being a robust and therefore heavy bird, he rises with 

 less alertness than either of these species, but with 

 more than the eagle. When on wing he proceeds ra- 

 ther sedately, at no great height, over the ground which 

 he intends to explore, occasionally wheeling, and some- 



