BUZZARD. 



33 



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, yon 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 Ealcon, and when on the wing 

 proceeds sedately in quest of its prej*, which, when it perceives, 

 halting sometimes for a moment, it darts down upon, and 

 generally with unfailing precision. Its quarry is then either 

 'consumed on the premises,' or carried oft' 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 

 day, 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 



