“The common buzzard is a large brown bird with a whitish throat, stomach-feathers marked with little lines alternately brown and white, and tail crossed by nine or ten dark stripes. Its beak is whitish at the base and black at the tip, its eyes and legs yellow. This species nests in tall trees, the nest being made of interwoven twigs and lined with wool and hair. It lays but three eggs at most, which are whitish and irregularly sprinkled with dingy yellow spots. It is the common buzzard especially that has won the reputation of stupidity with its leisurely flying and its patience in watching for prey. It usually watches on some mound of earth. Observers who have studied its habits say that sixteen is about the number of mice it commonly eats in one day, which makes nearly six thousand a year.” “That’s the kind of bird we should like to have about our houses if we could only tame it,” remarked Jules. “There is nothing to prevent our trying it,” his uncle rejoined. “The buzzard’s disposition is good enough. Other observers, who have studied its hunting of field-mice, estimate that it eats nearly four thousand of these in one year. From this number you can form some idea of the multitude of little rodents a whole flock of buzzards would be able to destroy. But we must not give the bird too much praise. I know that it does not hesitate, when occasion offers, to seize and carry off a wounded young hare; and I also know that when the snow is on the ground and the buzzard is pressed by hunger, it will pounce upon any stray chicken that may have got out of the poultry-yard. But what are these few acts of theft when compared with the thousands of rodents of all kinds that it clears away from our fields? Whatever the season of the year, one cannot open a buzzard’s crop without finding common mice, field-mice, and meadow-mice there by the dozen. If I owned a field that was ravaged by these rodents, I should lose no time in planting a few stumps there to serve as perches and watch-towers for buzzards in their patient hunt for their favorite game. “There is another variety of buzzard, the hawk-buzzard, that does us good service in its fondness for larvæ, caterpillars, and insects generally, particularly wasps.” “What, those wasps that hurt so when they sting?” asked Emile. “Yes, my boy; this buzzard feasts on the wasps whose sting is so painful to us; it swallows them without a thought of their sting, just as the hedgehog devours the viper and never worries about its venomous fangs. The bird attacks their nests with its beak and pulls out the nymphs from their cells, carrying them, fat and tender, to its little ones.