Common buzzard

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus first described the bird in 1758, under the name Falco buteo. Bernard Germain de Lacepede set up the genus Buteo in 1799. Buteo is simply the Latin word for a buzzard. European and African members of the genus are called buzzards, and American ones are called hawks. Americans attach the same word to the turkey vulture, a bird from another family.

The genus holds about 28 species, second only to Accipiter among hawk genera. The nominate race covers most of Europe, and the steppe buzzard covers the east. The steppe buzzard takes its scientific name from the Latin for fox, after its rufous plumage. Eastern and Himalayan buzzards were once counted here and are now separate species.

Evolution and relatives

The subfamily that holds Buteo arose in the Americas and is still richest there. DNA work places the common buzzard close to the red-tailed hawk of North America. That hawk fills the same role on its continent, and the two may form one species complex. Three African birds are close relatives: the mountain, forest and Madagascar buzzards. They are so close that some authors have asked whether they count as full species.

Genetic work suggests the buzzards of Eurasia and Africa split about 300,000 years ago. Fossil Buteo birds lived in Europe more than 5 million years ago, in the late Miocene. Those older fossils may not belong to the living group at all. One study links the huge plumage variation to low diversity at a single gene site.

Appearance

A typical European buzzard is dark brown above and paler below. A pale U runs across the breast, with a lighter line down the belly between dark flanks. The tail is barred grey-brown with a broad dark band near the tip. In flight the wings show a dark trailing edge and dark patches at the wrist. The bill is yellow with a black tip and the legs are yellow.

Adults measure 40 to 58 cm long with a wingspan of 109 to 140 cm. The tail is 17 to 23.6 cm long. Females run about 2 to 7% larger than males and weigh about 15% more. Extreme birds range from chocolate brown all over to almost white with a few brown arrowheads. Across Europe from 2000 to 2022, fewer very pale and very dark birds appeared and more intermediate ones.

Habitat and range

The species lives where woodland meets grassland, arable land or moor. It needs trees to nest and perch in, and open ground to hunt over. It is absent from treeless tundra, where the rough-legged buzzard replaces it. Birds breed from sea level to about 2,000 metres and mostly below 1,000 m. Buzzards in eastern Poland kept to mature stands within 30 to 90 metres of a clearing.

The range covers nearly all of Europe, including Ireland, Britain and the Mediterranean islands. It reaches east to western Siberia, northwestern China and northwestern Mongolia. Wintering birds spread across eastern and southern Africa as far as the Cape. Heavy urban development harms the species, which handles cities less well than the red-tailed hawk. Farms with hedges, woodlots and rough grass suit it, and clearing those causes local declines. GBIF holds records of the species from 139 countries.

Diet and hunting

The buzzard is a generalist and more than 300 prey species have been recorded. Voles matter most, above all the common vole and the field vole. Mean weight of vertebrate prey in Belarus came to 179.6 grams. Rabbits are important in Britain and Spain, and most taken weigh 159 to 550 g. The European mole is one of the main non-rodent items in the north.

Birds are taken too, mostly fledglings of chaffinches, pipits, blackbirds and wood pigeons. Very few of the birds it kills weigh more than 500 g. The largest known kill was a female capercaillie of about 1,985 g. Lizards can dominate the diet in the south, and slowworms did so in Norway in poor vole years. The bird also eats earthworms, beetles and carrion, including roadkill.

Most prey is caught by dropping from a perch onto the ground. The bird does not stoop hard like a falcon, but slides down with the wings held high. Open ground raises the hunting success rate, and thick shrub lowers it. Buzzards also walk about on the ground, and up to 30 have fed in one large field. Hovering is the rarest method, and one British study found that it caught no extra prey.

Behaviour and social life

A resident buzzard may spend more than half its day perched and still. It sits on tree tops, bare branches, poles, fence posts and rocks. Once airborne it soars well, though level flapping flight looks heavy. A home range covers about 0.5 to 2 square kilometres. Pairs hold their ground with display flights that begin in February.

In the display a bird circles upward on slightly raised wings, calling as it goes. The sky-dance is a series of climbs and dives that can be repeated 10 to 20 times. A dive may drop 60 metres before the bird spreads its wings and shoots up again. Rival males sometimes lock talons and tumble downward together. Densities vary widely, from 0.6 pairs per 100 square kilometres in Russia to 129 in Slovakia.

Communication and senses

The main call is a long, falling pee-yow that carries a long way. Listeners often mistake the sound for the cry of a cat. The same call sharpens in anger and grows wavering when the bird chases an intruder. A short, explosive version serves as an alarm near the nest. A pair may answer each other with a repeated note, and both chuckle and croak at the nest.

Resident birds call all year, while migrants call mainly in the breeding season. Young birds sound rougher than adults, which is how observers tell them apart. Like other hawks, the buzzard finds its prey by sight from a perch or on the wing. Display flight is also a signal, and a low pass shows the underwing pattern to a rival below. Up to 14 adults have gathered over one established display site.

Reproduction and life cycle

The pair builds a bulky nest of sticks, twigs and heather, usually in a tree. A nest measures about 1 to 1.2 metres across and 60 cm deep. Years of reuse can push it past 1.5 m across and over 200 kilograms in weight. Nests sit 3 to 25 metres up, and pairs often keep two to four alternatives. Where trees are missing the birds use crags, and 81% of 108 nests in the Italian Alps were on cliffs.

The season runs from March to July over most of the range. The female lays 2 to 6 eggs at intervals of two or three days. The eggs are white with sparse red-brown marks and average about 55 by 44 millimetres. She does most of the incubating, which lasts 33 to 35 days. The male brings all the food while she broods the small chicks.

A chick weighs about 45 grams at hatching and takes 48 hours to break out. Proper feathers appear at 12 to 15 days and the young are fully feathered at about a month. The youngest chick often starves in a brood of three or more. Birds fledge at 43 to 54 days and stay independent 6 to 8 weeks later. Most start breeding in their third summer, and siblings stay together for about a year.

Predators and threats

The northern goshawk is larger and more aggressive, and it drives buzzards out of good nest sites. A dummy goshawk near a buzzard nest was enough to lower breeding success. Reintroduced eagle-owls in Westphalia now take buzzard nestlings and brooding females. Black kites, booted eagles and lesser spotted eagles take over active buzzard nests. Peregrine falcons in southwestern England harass buzzards hard enough to injure them.

People remain the largest danger, mostly through poison and shot. At least 238 poisoned or persecuted buzzards were recovered in England from 1975 to 1989. The species is the raptor most often killed on Spanish power lines. Buzzards and ravens together made up nearly a third of recorded electrocutions there. Rabbit diseases cut breeding success in old rabbit country from 2.6 young a pair to 0.9.

Population and conservation

The IUCN estimates 2.1 to 3.7 million common buzzards. Europe holds at least 700,000 pairs, more than twice the next commonest raptor. Germany alone had about 140,000 pairs, and European Russia perhaps 500,000. Britain held 44,000 to 61,000 pairs by 2001, after decades of recovery. The bird returned to Ireland in the 1950s and had reached 26 pairs by the 1990s.

Numbers in Westphalia have nearly tripled over recent decades. A warmer climate may help by leaving voles more exposed to a hunting bird. Feeding stations helped the Irish population where rabbits had declined. Researchers use the buzzard as a bioindicator for pesticides and metals. Its short food chain on land keeps contamination lower than in fish-eating or bird-eating raptors.

Relationship with humans

Gamekeepers and landowners shot and poisoned buzzards for generations. Persecution, habitat change and falling prey stocks emptied much of Britain of the bird. Today no other British raptor is as numerous or as widely spread. British assessments now place it on the green list, the lowest level of concern. Illegal killing still happens, though probably less often than in the 1980s.

Motorists probably see buzzards more than any other raptor, perched on posts beside the road. The birds also feed on roadkill, which puts them in the path of traffic. They avoid city centres and rarely nest on buildings. Some Spanish pairs do nest around the walls of abandoned buildings. Farmers probably gain from a bird that eats voles, mice and rabbits.

In culture and myth

The English name follows the Latin buteo, which the Romans used for this bird. Settlers appear to have moved the word to the turkey vulture, so buzzard now means two birds. British writers describe the call as a mournful mew rather than a hawk's scream. That likeness to a cat seems to be the first thing a listener notices. In Britain the bird was long treated as vermin, and the law protects it only in modern times.

The spring passage over Israel is probably one of the great wildlife spectacles on Earth. Between 150,000 and nearly 466,000 steppe buzzards have crossed in a single spring. Watchers at Falsterbo in southern Sweden have counted up to 41,000 birds in autumn. In northeastern Turkey a single autumn count reached 205,000 birds. Such counts appear to draw birdwatchers back to the same headlands each year.