Common Buzzard

On July 3, 2022 Judy and I were in Portugal with a guide, Bernardo Barreto of Birds and Nature Tours in Portugal, taking a birding tour of the Sado Estuary. He identified a common buzzard which I got a poor photograph of and reported it on iNaturalist. I did a blog post on it on August 17, 2022. Two other identifiers agreed with me, but then a third disagreed and labeled it a black kite. One of the other prior identifiers agreed and changed their identification. I looked closer and changed my mind as well. So although I've previously posted on the common buzzard, this is my first post on a real common buzzard. 

I've subsequently seen two common buzzards. The first was in Maulbronn, Germany on May 23, 2025. I was with Judy's entire family (all siblings and their spouses) on a family trip to honor and recognize her deceased grandfather. We were in the town square and the common buzzard was flying over. 

At the time I thought this was my second common buzzard siting. 

Then recently, we were with Judy's family again, all of here siblings and their spouses, on a Viking Cruise which originated in Istanbul and ended in Athens. We were docked at Heraklion harbor on the island of Crete. They'd scheduled an afternoon shore excursion and the morning was free. So I went to the harbor entrance and hired a taxi to take me to the Aposelemis Wildlife Refuge. The driver took me to the dam instead, which turned out to have a few birds, but nothing of real interest. I asked him to drive me up the road into the mountains and we crested a ridge and drove into the Langada Valley, at over 5,000 feet in elevation. There I got photos of what the taxi driver said was a local hawk, standing on a power line. Later, iNaturalist identified it as a common buzzard. That makes two, both seen when I was on trips with Judy's entire family, once in Germany and the other in Greece. 

There are lots of subspecies of conflicting number. It appears that both of my sightings were ssp. buteo. When I hear the term "buzzard," I still think of a vulture. Something that comes from my youth. AI says that people in North America often use the term "buzzard" to refer to vultures. Some believe it is because early North Americans mistakenly called vultures "buzzards" because they soared high in the sky like the buzzards back in Europe. Another take on the matter is here. 

An illustration of ssp. buteo from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World.