Buteo buteo
The common buzzard is a medium-sized bird of prey with a large range. It is a member of the genus Buteo in the family Accipitridae. The species lives in most of Europe and extends its breeding range across much of the Palearctic as far as northwestern China, far western Siberia and northwestern Mongolia. Over much of its range, it is a year-round resident. However, buzzards from the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere as well as those that breed in the eastern part of their range typically migrate south for the northern winter, many journeying as far as South Africa.

caroline legg · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- common buzzardPBDB
- Sits inside
- ButeoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 966.5 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
18 occurrences of Buteo buteo on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
18 occurrences- Pleistocene88%
- Holocene12%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Buteo buteo has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Buteo buteo and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Buteo buteo and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
343 taxa- Turdus10 sites
- Columba7 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus7 sites
- Scolopax rusticola7 sites
- Accipiter nisus6 sites
- Columba palumbus6 sites
- Corvus6 sites
- Corvus monedula6 sites
- Tyto alba6 sites
- Accipiter gentilis5 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos5 sites
- Athene cretensis5 sites
- Columba livia5 sites
- Falco tinnunculus5 sites
- Fringilla5 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax5 sites
- Columba oenas4 sites
- Coturnix coturnix4 sites
- Erithacus rubecula4 sites
- Falco eleonorae4 sites
- Haliaeetus albicilla4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Sturnus4 sites
- Turdus iliacus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Buteo buteo, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
13 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece6
- Animal remains from 17th century Carnide, Lisbon, Portugal.1
- Avian fossil assemblages at the onset of the LGM in the eastern Alps: A palaecological contribution from the Rio Secco Cave (Italy)1
- Birds around the Minatogawa Man: the Late Pleistocene avian fossil assemblage of the Minatogawa Fissure, southern part of Okinawa Island, Central Ryukyu Islands, Japan1
- A new Middle Pleistocene bird assemblage from Cava di Breccia di Casal Selce (Ponte Galeria, Rome, Italy)1
- A 9,000 Year History of Seal Hunting on Lake Baikal, Siberia: The Zooarchaeology of Sagan-Zaba II1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview1
- The Late Pleistocene fossil birds of the central and southern Ryukyu Islands, and their zoogeographical implications for the Recent avifauna of the archipelago1
- A new species of extinct flightless passerine (Emberizidae: Emberiza) from the Canary Islands1
- Castiglione 3, un nouveau remplissage fosilifere d'age Pleistocene moyen dans le karst de la region d'Oletta (Haute-Corse)1
- Birds of the Cromer Forest Bed series of the East Anglian Pleistocene1
Each of the 18 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1 further reference is not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Buteo buteo
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- caroline legg
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Buteo buteo · NHMUK:ZOO:S/2007.139.12
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itButeo through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)