my own which seems suited to that outside view of birds that we are taking. The Vultures and Kites are the jackals and hyaenas of the bird world. The Buzzards and Harriers are a step higher. They like fresh meat and will have their prey alive, but, not possessing strength or speed to master any very noble quarry, they turn their attention chiefly to reptiles and creeping things. A Buzzard's idea of life is to sit upon a pole, or on the top of a small tree, commanding a good expanse of grass land, and to watch for a field mouse, or a lizzard, or even a fat grasshopper. If you see a biggish, untidy hawk, of a sandy-brown colour more or less dashed with whitish, spending the morning in this way, you may put it down as Butaster teesa, the White-eyed Buzzard, which is the only member of that branch of the family often seen in Bombay. Even it is not common, except in famine years, for Bombay contains very little of that kind of grassy land which suits it. In the Deccan it is everywhere.
The Harrier is a more frequent visitor to our island, and it is not a bird that one can pass without wanting to know what it is. There is something stylish in the get-up of a Harrier, and also something unique. It is not like any other bird that you meet with on land. On the sea you may find something to compare with it, for widely as the anatomist is obliged to separate them, I can imagine a classification in which the Harriers and the Gulls would form one family. They are wonderfully alike in the life that they lead and alike in the qualities which fit them for it. As the unwearied Gull ranges over the ocean and pounces on the careless fish, so the Harrier ranges from morning till night over hill and plain and drops on
