BUZZARD 67 
Diurnal Birds-of-Prey, which contains, among many others, the 
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 Krrr, 
Milvus ictinus. 'Though ornitho- 
logical writers 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 probably that in the former, as the 
figure shews, the bill is decurved from the base, while in the 
latter it is for about a third of its length straight. The head, 
too, in the Buzzards is short and round, while in the Eagles 
it is elongated. Im a general way Buzzards are smaller than 
Eagles, though there are several exceptions to this statement, 
and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if 
not all of the Buzzards, about which anything of the kind is 
with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, 
while the Eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The 
Buzzards are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of 
flight, 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, 
and 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 effect, 
whatever it may be, is inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the 
whole 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 B. vulgaris already mentioned) 
resident, and now almost confined to a few of the wilder districts ; 
the other the Rough-legged Buzzard, Archibuteo lagopus, an irregular 
winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in large bands from the north 
of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being 
feathered down to the toes. The HoNEy-buzzArD, Pernis apivorus, 
asummer-visitor from the south, and breeding, or attempting to 
Buzzarp, (After Swainson.) 
