Upper parts bluish grey; primaries black; secondaries with three transverse dark bars; lateral tail-feathers white barred with reddish orange; under parts white variously streaked with reddish orange. _Female_: upper parts brown of various tints; under parts pale reddish yellow, with longitudinal bright red streaks. Beak black; legs and feet yellow. Length, eighteen inches. * * * * * This hawk was named by Yarrell after the well-known ornithologist, Colonel Montagu, who was the first to distinguish between this species and the hen harrier, which it so closely resembles. Seen on the wing at a distance of two to three hundred yards, the sharpest-sighted ornithologist would probably be unable to say whether the bird was a hen harrier or a Montagu’s harrier. The present species is slimmer bodied; but, owing to the greater comparative length of its wings, it appears, when flying, as large as the hen harrier. It is a spring and summer visitor to this country, and in its flight, and preying and breeding habits, closely resembles the species last described. Small birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects form its prey. It breeds, or formerly bred, in suitable localities in most English counties from the south coast northwards to Norfolk, making its slight nest on the ground, among the furze-bushes or heather. The eggs resemble those of the hen harrier in colouring, but are smaller in size. Buzzard. Buteo vulgaris. [Illustration: FIG. 68.--BUZZARD. ¹⁄₁₀ natural size.] Upper parts, neck, and head dark brown mottled with brown of a darker shade; tail marked with twelve transverse bands; beak lead-coloured; cere, irides, and feet yellow. Length: male, twenty inches; female, twenty-two inches. * * * * * It is impossible for anyone who loves wild bird life to write about the buzzard without a feeling of profound melancholy. For this hawk, too, like the harriers, although once common, and still called in books the common buzzard, is a vanishing species. Howard Saunders writes: ‘Fifty years ago it used to breed in Norfolk and in other counties abounding in partridges and ground game, without being considered incompatible with their existence; but with the increase of pheasant-worship the doom of the buzzard was sealed, for, the larger the “hawk,” the worse it must necessarily be!’ My one consolation in this sad portion of my work, which tells of the noble and useful species whose ‘doom is sealed,’ is, that I am not writing for grown men, but for the young, who are not yet the slaves of a contemptible convention, nor have come under a system which has been only too mildly described as ‘stupid’ by every British ornithologist during the last five or six decades.