In yesterday’s post we saw how the buzzard has had a long history with humans in North and North-Western Europe, having basically the same name in English, French, Dutch and German. It is no surprise that the bird features in a lot of folklore from this region.
Buzzards sit in a curious spot between respect and suspicion in old European lore.
In Britain
They were once thought to be “weather prophets.” A Buzzard circling low meant rain; high and screaming meant fair weather. Shepherds in the Welsh borders called them gwybedog — “the fly-catcher” — because they seemed to hang unmoving in the sky.
In France
They were sometimes called oiseau du dimanche (“Sunday bird”), because their lazy spiral flight felt like a leisurely Sunday walk in the air. They were also linked with la mort douce — the gentle death — because seeing one perched quietly near a house was taken to mean an elderly person would pass peacefully. Slightly morbid but oddly tender.
In the Low Countries
The Buizerd appears in medieval hunting texts as the “lesser hawk,” the one nobody boasted about training. Yet peasants treated it as a guardian of the fields, because where a Buzzard circled, the mice tended to panic.
Older, deeper folklore
Across Europe, the Buzzard was the messenger between woods and clearings — living at the boundary where human paths meet the high forest air. Some traditions said its cry was the voice of the woodland dead, warning travellers not to stray after dusk.
And because it circles upwards on rising air, it became a symbol of the soul lifting, of rising from the everyday into clarity. A surprisingly mystical reputation for a bird that often looks like it’s just waiting for a worm to make a mistake.