The Buzzard. 105 



colour is white, or greeuisli-wliilc, iiiarl<c(l sparingly witli reddish -brown and violet 

 shell markings; when • held up to the light tlie shell looks green. Sonic arc- 

 almost without any markings- in every clutch it is common to find one egg less 

 marked and a little smaller than the other eggs — others are richly covered with 

 large and bold splashes of red ; others have the red blotches forming a complete 

 zone round the larger end ; while others are freckled over with small spots of 

 rusty i-ed. This description would suffice for the eggs of almost all the Buzzards 

 and Kites which, in their varieties, so closely approach one another that, if large 

 series of eacli species should be mingled together, it would be quite impossible to 

 separate them, and to assign them to their proper owners, unless the eggs had 

 been previously marked. 



The Buzzard feeds upon young rabbits, field-mice, rats, moles, earth-worms, 

 beetles, frogs, glow-worms, lizards, snakes, and an occasional small bird picked up 

 off the ground ; the crop of one examined by Cecil Smith was found full of 

 earwigs. When pressed by hunger Buzzards will also devour berries. The cry 

 of the Buzzard has been compared to the mewing of a cat. As has already been 

 stated, Buzzards do very well in confinement, but the}^ require plenty of water to 

 bathe in, and fur, in the shape of rats, mice, rabbits, etc., must be given with 

 their food. As an instance of their domesticity, their fondness for rearing j'oung 

 birds may be mentioned ; in the first volume of the first edition of Yarrell's 

 British Birds, at page eighty, there is a vignette representing a Buzzard taking 

 charge of a brood of chickens. This actually occurred at the Chequers Inn, at 

 Uxbridge, where a hen Buzzard hatched and brought up a brood of chickens for 

 several years in succession. Buzzards will live a number of j-ears if well cared 

 for ; in his beautiful Coloured Plates of British Birds, Lord Lilford gives the 

 portrait of a Buzzard that was then alive in his aviaries, a very dark bird with a 

 purple bloom upon its plumage, that had been taken more than twenty years 

 before from a nest in Cornwall. 



The Common Buzzard is generalh' distributed over Central and Western 

 Europe. It is not found in high latitudes, its northern breeding limit, according 

 to Saunders, being about lat. 66" in Sweden. In the east of Europe its place is 

 taken by an allied species, Butco desertorum. It is found in the Canaries and 

 Madeira, "while the Azores owe their name to its abundance in that group when 

 discovered by the Portugese." 



In the adult male all the upper parts are dark bro-\\-n, the feathers of the 

 back having a slight gloss and some of them paler edgings ; on the forehead and 

 nape are some white feathers ; ^\dngs blackish brown ; tail dark bro-mi, -n-ith ten 

 or twelve lighter bars ; under parts yello-\\-ish- white, with longitudinal marks and 



Vol. Ill R 



