2d 
NATURAL HISTORV. 
rom its plunder. For tins reason, of all birds, the kite is 
tl»e good housewife s greatest tormenter and aversion 
Of all obscene birds, the kite is the best known • but the 
buzzard among us is the most common. This bird is in leno th 
one foot eight inches. The back and wings are brown ; die 
belly is yellowish, spotted with brown, and the tail is a lio-ht 
brown tanned with black. The buzzard is a sluggish, inac- 
tive bird, and often remains perched whole days together 
upon the same bough. He is rather an assassin than a pur- 
suer; and lives more upon frogs, mice, and insects, which he 
can easily seize, than upon birds which he is obliged to fol- 
low. He lives in summer by robbing the nestsT of other 
birds, and sucking their eggs, and more resembles the owl 
kind in Ins countenance than any other rapacious bird of day 
ihe goss-hawk and sparrow-kawk are what Mr. Willoughby 
calls short-winged birds, and are consequently unfit for train- 
ing, however injurious they may be to the pigeon-house or the 
sportsman, J hey have been indeed taught to fly at mime • 
but little is to be obtained from their efforts, being difficult 
of instruction, and capricious in their obedience. 
• ^ ( ' 1e buzzard, kite, and falcon kind, above seventy dif- 
ferent species, foreign and domestic, have been enumerated. 
Ur all these the nature and properties are nearly the same 
and the description we have given of the gyr-falcon will ap- 
ply to most of the hawk species, only differing in size and 
other minuter particulars ; and that of the buzzard to the 
kites in general, with the same allowance. Of the foreign 
birds of these species, some are crested, and others have 
plumage diflering from ours. Of the swallow-tailed falcon 
ot America, the head, neck, and breast are white, the back 
and wings are black, glossed with purple and green. The 
tail is forked like that of a swallow, and like that bird it sub- 
sists almost entirely on the wing. It is rather smaller than 
the common kite. 
Thf. Shrike, or Butcher Biro. Before we conclude 
tins short history of rapacious birds that prey by day, it may 
not be improper to describe a tribe of smaller birds, that seem 
iiom their size rather to be classed with the harmless order of 
the sparrow kind ; but which from their crooked beak, cou- 
rage, and appetite for slaughter, certainly deserve a place here. 
I he lesser butcher bird is not much above the size of a lark • 
that of the smallest species is not so big as a sparrow* yet 
diminutive as these little animals are, they make themselves 
formidable to birds of four times their dimensions 
The great cinerous shrike, or butcher bird, is sometimes 
