Butastur teesa used to be called the white-eyed buzzard, but one day a worthy ornithologist discovered that the bird was not the genuine article, that its legs and its eggs betrayed the fact that it is not a true buzzard. Therefore a new name had to be found for the bird. In their search for this, naturalists have not met with great success. Indeed, the last state of the bird is worse than the first, for it is now known as the white-eyed buzzard-eagle. To the adjectival part of the name no one can take exception, because the white eye and a whitish patch of feathers on the back of the head are the most remarkable features of a rather ordinary-looking fowl. The name “buzzard-eagle,” however, is most misleading. Although, as I have previously had occasion to state, eagles are not quite the noble creatures the poets have made them out to be, to suggest that Butastur teesa is one of them is to insult the whole aquiline community. Eagles, notwithstanding the fact that they sometimes eat carrion, attack, each according to the size of its talons, quarry of considerable size, and are, in consequence, the terror of other birds. As Phil Robinson says of them, “they stand in the sky as the symbol of calamity. When they stoop to the earth it is a vision of sudden death.” To speak thus of Butastur teesa would be, as Euclid says, absurd. The white-eyed buzzard is almost contemptible as a bird of prey; he is a raptorial degenerate, a mere loafer.

In India one often sees a white-eyed buzzard, some mynas, a pair of doves, several bee-eaters, one or two king crows, and a roller, sitting, all in a row, on a telegraph wire within a few yards of one another; the first and the last, as likely as not, on the tops of the telegraph poles, looking like pillar saints. Contrast this state of affairs with what happens when a hawk or a falcon appears on the scene. “Take to woodland,” writes Phil Robinson, “and fill it with your birds of beauty and of song; put your ‘blackbird pipers in every tree,’ and have linnets ‘starting all along the bushes.’ Let melody burthen every bough and every cloud hold a lark. Have your doves in the pines, and your thrushes in the hawthorn; spangle your thistle-beds with restless goldfinches, and your furze with yellowhammers. The sun is shining brightly, and the countryside seems fairly overflowing with gladness. But with a single touch you can alter the whole scene; for let one hawk come skimming round that copse yonder, and the whole woodland is mute in the moment. Here and there shrill warning cries of alarm, and here and there a bird dipping into the central covert of the brake. But for the rest there might not be one winged thing alive in all the landscape. The hawk throws a shadow of desolation as it goes, its wings scatter fears on either side; silence precedes it and gloom pursues.”

Small birds fear the hawk and despise the teesa, because they know that the former is as swift and energetic as the latter is slow and lazy. But it is not easy to understand why the white-eyed buzzard does not prey upon wild birds, because its wings are, in proportion to its size, longer than those of most birds of prey. It is not that Butastur considers birds unfit to eat. On the contrary, says Mr. C. H. Donald, “that he would love to catch a bird for his dinner is proved by the fact of his coming down to a bird behind a net as soon as he sees it, but I suppose experience has taught him that it is no use his trying to catch one in its wild state, and in full possession of its wings and feathers, and, consequently, he never tries.” Thus, we have no alternative but to regard the white-eyed buzzard as a degenerate, a bird that might starve in the midst of plenty.

When a hungry Butastur sees flitting all around him potential meals in the shape of small birds, his feelings must be akin to those of the impecunious man in the comic song who, as he contemplates the insurance policy on the life of his shrewish wife, cries out: “Stone broke with fifty quid staring me in the face!” The white-eyed buzzard has perforce to feed upon very humble quarry, upon the creeping and crawling things, upon beetles and insects, with an occasional rat or frog. His usual method of capturing his prey is very similar to that of the shrike, or butcher-bird, or, to come nearer home, to that of the true buzzards. He takes up a position on a bare branch of a tree, a telegraph pole, a fence, or other point of vantage, such as a heap of kankar, and there waits patiently until some small creature wanders by. On to this he quietly drops, secures it in his feeble talons, and returns to the perch to devour his quarry and thus bring to a close one of nature’s little tragedies, of which millions are being daily enacted. After he has finished his dinner he loves to sit awhile, as the nursery rhyme tells us we should do, and quietly digest what he has eaten. I once disturbed a Butastur that had just finished a heavy meal in the shape of a frog, with the result that the bird “brought up” the frog!

Sometimes the white-eyed buzzard beats over the ground in search of its quarry, but this is not his usual modus operandi. If you would see the white-eyed buzzard, go into an open place and watch for a brown bird a little larger than a crow, sitting motionless on some point of vantage, like Patience on a monument. By its sluggish habits, its small size, its white eye, and the whitish patch at the back of its head, you may recognise it. It utters a peculiar plaintive screaming call, which is heard mostly at the nesting season. “In February and March,” writes Mr. Donald, “just before the breeding season, these birds may be frequently seen soaring high up in the heavens, and giving vent to their plaintive call, and might be taken for falcons if it were not for their much more rounded wings. When at a height their breasts appear dark and their wings (lower surface) very light and silvery.”

Needless to say, the nest of this species is not a very skilfully constructed affair. It is not more beautiful than a dak bungalow, but, like the latter, serves the purpose for which it is built. It is very like that of the common crow—a loosely-put-together collection of sticks, devoid of anything in the form of lining, and placed fairly high up in the fork of a tree. The tree selected is usually one with rather dense foliage, and one of a clump or row, in preference to a solitary tree; nevertheless, I have seen a nest in an isolated tree. The eggs, which are greyish white, are not laid until some time after the nest has been made ready. Teesas are very noisy at the nesting season; the sitting hen utters constantly a mewing cry, which renders the nest easy to locate; but her vocal efforts pale into insignificance before those of the young hopefuls. These, to quote Mr. Benjamin Aitken, “keep up an incessant screaming for days before and after they leave the nest; so that you cannot pass within two hundred yards of a brood of nearly fledged or newly fledged birds without being made painfully aware of their existence and good spirits.”