Gregory Nooney, age 10, of Sioux City, Ia., for his question:
What is a buzzard.?
In the olden days of falconry, it was stylish to call a useless person a buzzard. All king Arthur's court knew that the buzzard was a useless hawk who could not be trained to hunt other birds. In the new world, we borrowed the word buzzard to name our wide winged vulture.
Most of the world's great birds of prey belong in the order falconidae. Among them is the lordly eagle, king of birds, though the name of the order is taken from the fierce falcon. An assortment of hawks and ospreys, condors and vultures also are classed as falconiforne birds. The order includes two varieties of buzzard, one group native to the old world and one native to the new world.
The buzzards of the old world are birds of prey who feed on raw, fresh meat. They are close kin to the high flying hawks that prowl the airways, armed with hooked beaks and saber talons. The hawks can out maneuver their victims of the bird world, and some of them can out fly the swiftest of swifts. Compared with these agile pouncers, the old world buzzards are bunglers and bumblers. They can catch only frogs and rats, mice and snakes.
These backward, birds of prey are classed in the genlbs buteo. They have several relatives in the new world, but we call. Them hawks rather than buzzards. To us, the buzzard or turkey buzzard is a wide winged vulture who cannot even catch himself a dinner of fresh raw meat. He is a scavenger or carrion eater who must wait for some helpless animal to die in the wilds.
Our buzzard is a big bird, measuring some 30 inches from his scraggy tail to the top of his bald, turkey red head. His coarse plumage is greasy black and always seems to be in need of grooming. On the ground he is a clumsy fellow, but in the air he is a champion. His great wings spread maybe six feet wide, and he soars aloft for hours, almost out of sight.
His sharp eyes scan the ground below for dead or dying meat. Then down he flops to dine, and in a few minutes he is joined by a flock of hungry friends and relatives who descend from who knows where. Our turkey buzzard. Seems to be a dirty, bad smelling, repulsive bird. But in the world of nature he is a valuable garbage collector. He devours the bodies of animals that otherwise would be left to rot and decay, fouling the air and the ground of the fresh, open outdoors.
Our turkey buzzard belongs in the family cathartidae, which means the cleansers. Our native buteos, cousins of the old world buzzards, include some very handsome birds. One is the big, red tailed hawk whose shrill cry may be heard across the land. Another is the speckled, red shouldered hawk who makes his home in wild, swampy regions. These and other native buteos are great hunters of frogs, snakes and rodents, but they do not prey upon members of the bird world.