CHAPTER XLIII. 



BUZZARDS AND KITES. 



From the Latin ''Buteo," coming from I know not what 

 through the French ''Busard," we have the English name 

 Buzzard to characterize a class of hirds closely allied to the 

 eagles on one side, to kites on another, and even, in downy 

 softness of plumage, perhaps to owls. Into all the delicate 

 differences which mark off the one from the other, it is not 

 our intention here to enter. Readers can find them minutely 

 laid down in books treating of such exact bird lore. Two 

 species of the genus Buteo are known to China, Buteo Asia- 

 ticus or Jajjonicits, which takes the place of B. plumipes, the 

 rough-legged buzzard of western lands, and B. hemilasitis. 

 The first is a fine big bird reaching anywhere from eighteen 

 inches to two feet in length, and weighing from two to two 

 and a half pounds. In colour it is considerably lighter than 

 most of the raptores already described. Its tints are, as 

 theirs are, brown and grey lightening to white here and 

 there, but none of the browns approaches in darkness the 

 chocolate of the golden eagle and some of the others. The 

 rough-legs vary, however, very widely both in size and 

 appearance. None of the buzzards is gifted with great 

 rapidity in flight, and in consequence their methods of attack 

 and the animals on which they feed differ from those of the 

 sparrow-hawk, the hobby, and the peregrine. The buzzard 

 is a slow, sluggish, apparently lazy bird, so much so that his 

 name in olden days was used as a synonym for slowness and 

 stupidity. But here the owlish softness of the feathers 

 comes into play, and the buzzard makes up in suddenness of 

 attack what he lacks in swiftness. If strong flying grouse, 

 partridge, or pheasant can laugh at pursuit by such a foe, 

 it is very different with the low-lying mole, rat, rabbit, 

 or hare. On them the descent, only from a few feet of 

 elevation, is fatal. Were the feathers of the buzzard as stiff 

 and sharply edged as those of the peregrine, he might be 

 heard approaching, but with the downy-edged covering 

 which nature has supplied the buzzard, there is no sound, 

 and the first notice of his approach which the poor 

 ground-loving mammal receives is the penetrating clutch of 

 his torturing talons. This particular species is commoner in 

 south-western China in the cold weather than in the interior 



