FALCO BUTEO. 133 



carrion-feeding bird." He gives as his reason — that although 

 his tame rabbits had young ones every six weeks, which ran 

 about the shed along with the buzzard, it never touched one of 

 them, although often pressed with hunger, for it was " difficult 

 always to provide it with such food as dead moles, rats, birds, 

 and the like ; " and during the two years it never touched 

 anything alive, although it had ample opportunity. It was a 

 wild bird when he got it, trapped by a keeper ; from this, and 

 from its never trying to escape through a large hole in the side 

 of the netting of his shed, this writer justifies the opinion of 

 our forefathers in their application of the word " buzzard " to a 

 foolish fellow. Shakespeare had no great opinion of its speed 

 when he makes Petruchio say to Katherine — 



" O slow-wing'd turtle ! shall a buzzard take thee? " 



Compared with the falcons, poets scorned the buzzard- 

 Robinson, in " The Poet's Birds," says " the buzzard is hardly 

 worth calling a bird, and is used to express the ne plus ultra of 

 unworthiness among fowls," which is borne out by Rob Roy 

 exclaiming, when Captain Thornton's party was sent to surprise 

 him in the Highlands — 



" My dirk and claymore there, some o' ye ; 

 I must attack those buzzards in the rear ! " 



And yet, when you see it with keen eye and undaunted deport- 

 ment, there is, as in all raptorial birds, much nobility in its 

 bearing — at least the painter would say so, independent of 

 the poet. Shakespeare draws a fine discerning comparison 

 between the eagle and the buzzard (which he calls a puttock) 

 in Imogen's reply to King Cymbeline, concerning her choice of 

 a husband — 



Cym. " Thou might'st have had the sole son of my queen ! 

 Imo. O bless 'd, that I might not ! i" chose an eagle, 

 And did avoid a puttock." 



And, regarding the doubt of its killing birds, equally discerning 

 is Warwick's reply to Queen Margaret respecting the Duke of 

 Gloster's murder — 



War. " Who finds the heifer dead, and bleeding fresh, 

 And sees fast by a butcher with an axe, 

 But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter? 

 Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, 

 But may imagine how the bird was dead, 

 Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak ? 

 Even so suspicious is this tragedy." 



