BUZZARD. 30 
steady as its own flight, until ‘by degrees, beautifully less,’ 
it leaves you glad to rest your eyeballs, and if you look again 
for it, you look in vain. When soaring aloft, the flight of 
the Buzzard is even peculiarly dignified, if J may use such an 
expression, nor do I know of any bird by which, on the wing, 
the attention is more immediately arrested. It looms large 
also in the distance, and those who have had frequent oppor- 
tunities of comparing together its apparent size and that of 
the Golden Eagle, have said that the former may easily be 
mistaken for the latter, if both are not seen together in 
tolerable propinquity. Even when high in the air, particularly 
on a bright and sunny day, the bars and mottled markings 
on the wings and tail, the motions of which latter are also 
clearly discernible in steering its course, appear visibly distinct. 
The flight of this species appears heavy, but is not so in 
reality: a series of sweeps, when, in piscatorial language, the 
bird is on the feed. It rises slowly at first, more after the 
manner of an Eagle than a Falcon, and when on the wing 
proceeds sedately in quest of its prey, which, when it perceives, 
halting sometimes for a moment, it darts dowa upon, and 
generally with unfailing precision. Its quarry is then either 
‘consumed on the premises,’ or carried off for the purpose to 
some more convenient or more secure place of retreat, or to 
its nest, to supply the wants of its young. It does not 
continue on the wing for a very long time together. When not 
engaged in flight, it will remain, even for hours together, in 
the same spot—on the stump of a tree, or the point of a cliff, 
motionless; as some have conjectured, from repletion; and 
others from being on the look out for prey, at which, when 
coming within its ken, to stoop in pursuit. It frequents very 
much the same haunts, and may often be seen from day to 
duy, and at the same hour of the day, beating the same 
hunting ground. 
I am inclined to think that the species of prey most naturally 
sought by the Buzzard is the rabbit. It feeds, however, for 
necessity has no law, on a great variety of other kinds of 
food. It destroys numberless moles, of which it also’ seems 
particularly fond, as well as field mice, leverets, rats, snakes, 
frogs, toads, the young of game, and other birds, worms, 
insects, and newts. The latter it seems to have been thought to 
have obtained, by some means or other from their pools, 
but such a supposition is by no means necessary, for those 
little animals, like many other water reptiles, are often to be 
VOL, I. ’ D 
