𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐝 Part the First
I’m sure you have heard that long, wavering ‘peeuuuuwww’ drifting through and over the canopy. That’ll be the Buzzard (Buse, Buizerd), circling above the beeches like it owns the place — which, to be fair, it rather does.
Its scientific name is 𝐵𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑜 𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑜, a tautonym. Found only in zoology, not botany, it signals that this particular species is the anchor around which the genus was described, the defining core species. So the Buzzard is the hawk by which all other hawks are judged. No wonder it carries an air of self-importance and is possibly the reason there are two ‘z’ in Scrabble.
Curiously, English Buzzard, French Buse, Dutch Buizerd and German Bussard are all close cousins in sound and meaning. When a name survives across four language families, it usually signals something old, a species so familiar to people across Europe that its name settled early and stayed put. The buzzard was not a marginal bird. It was part of the shared rural imagination.
For such a large bird, it is agile in the air, curving gracefully through the trees. It is at home here.
Diet? Mostly voles, mice, shrews, a few earthworms, occasionally a young rabbit, and quite a lot of carrion. That mix makes them one of the Forest’s quiet janitors: they keep the rodent population stable and clear away what the foxes miss.
Buzzards are the default raptors of the Forêt de Soignes. They’re not in a rush. They patrol the edges of the fields and clearings in and alongside the Forest and are particularly partial to sitting in the classic “statue pose” on a dead branch, looking mildly disappointed in everything below.