22 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



crimson flowers of the red-rattle to the drabness of the 

 marsh. 



But if contrast is one method, expression, the expliciting 

 of the implicit, to use a clumsy phrase, is another, and this 

 brings me to the buzzard, whose life and movement 

 translate into a more active music the character of his 

 home. 



The buzzard Butco vulgaris as he is called with 

 unconscious irony has taken a better hold on life since 

 the war, and somewhat broadened his distribution, not 

 because gamekeepers are any more intelligent or merciful 

 than they were (many of them still regard nightjars as 

 a kind of hawk, and string them up on a branch as 

 feathered felons), but because of the relaxation of game- 

 preserving. If it can hardly be expected for some years 

 to come that gamekeepers or collectors will acquire an 

 elementary knowledge of science or regard for other 

 people, still the fact that the buzzard's food is practically 

 the same as the kestrel's blindworms, adders, lizards, 

 mice, rats, moles, frogs, earthworms, crane flies, grass- 

 hoppers, Coleoptera, etc. should penetrate the skull of 

 the game-preserver and allow this very handsome species 

 a corner in the sun. 



The buzzard is coloured mottled brown with silvery flecks 

 and bufnsh variations, and is easily distinguishable from 

 other hawks by large size (except for the Iceland Falcon, 

 it is the biggest of the Falconidce), a leisureliness of dis- 

 position, and, when the bird is soaring, by the roundness 

 of the wings, which are curved upwards at the terminal 

 feathers and show the sky between the primary quills, 

 as do the raven's. In districts where they are left at 

 peace, they are more social than most of their fellow 

 falcons ; they migrate in company, and in the autumn 

 travel in small family parties. 



It was thus that I saw them every day for nearly 

 three weeks, for their residence was only a hundred yards 

 from mine, that same conical, granite pile isolated on 

 the moorland, where the starlings held their air-sports. 

 Being from East Anglia, where they shoot everything 

 that moves, I was amazed at the tameness of these great 

 birds, and that they did not salute the sovereignty of 



