26 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



saw a raven treated in the same way and with the same 

 results. It was only on these uncomfortable occasions 

 that I heard the " mewing " of the buzzards — wheewur, 

 wheewur — a complaining, drawled, high-pitched and melan- 

 choly cry. 



One thing I found they did which I have not seen re- 

 corded in any of the scanty accounts of the bird I have 

 seen ; ^ they hover almost as brilliantly as the kestrel does. 

 One watches them floating downwind in their tranquil 

 way and then curling round into it. There is a per- 

 ceptible stiffening of the whole body, the wings are slightly 

 elevated above the body's level and the primaries tilted 

 up and round. There they remained upwind, with scarce 

 a flicker of the wings visible to the naked eye, and as 

 though suspended by invisible wires. Then, after a 

 short or a long period, the tension was relaxed, and the 

 birds went downwind again to hover in a different place, 

 or, with the wings half-open, dropped like a stone to the 

 ground. Buzzards fly, but they do not hover for fun, 

 and this characteristic which I observed every day is 

 evidence in itself that their food is similar to the 

 kestrel's. 



But the most striking feature of the life of the buzzard 

 is its intimate relationship with the landscape, for in 

 mid-air they seem to articulate the moors, the sea, the 

 bluffs and promontories, to enlarge and ennoble the 

 whole prospect, a kind of nucleus to a wide magnificence of 

 outline. When they are out of the sky it appears to 

 reach down lower and to enclose one more narrowly, 

 while land and sea seem dwarfed and emptied, as 

 though a fine headpiece to the page of an old book had 

 been rubbed away. There was a headland forming the 

 horn to a bay close to where I was living, and running 

 a long way out to sea. All of it but the point was a 

 broad-backed, barren moor with cromlechs and hut 

 circles upon it, looking like the vertical plates on the 



1 Mr. Arthur Brook's The Buzzard at Home (Witherby, 3s. 6d. 

 net) is the most recent and the best I know. It is a vivid and 

 intimate account (gathered at considerable personal risk on a 

 precipitous cliff) of the buzzard's domestic life, and contains a 

 number of remarkable photographs. 



