THE BUZZARD. 105 
colour is white, or greenish-white, marked sparingly with reddish-brown and violet 
shell markings; when held up to the light the shell looks green. Some are 
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 red. 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 each 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 they 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 young 
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 years 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 generally 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, Buteo 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 brown, the feathers of the 
back having a slight gloss and some of them paler edgings; on the forehead and 
nape are some white feathers; wings blackish brown; tail dark brown, with ten 
or twelve lighter bars; under parts yellowish-white, with longitudinal marks and 
VoL. 1 R 
