Europe's buzzards are losing their color diversity, citizen science reveals

As its name suggests, the common buzzard is one of Europe's most familiar birds of prey, often spotted perched on fence posts scanning for mice and worms, or performing spectacular loop dives over fields to attract mates. In French, it goes by an equally revealing name: buse variable, or the "variable buzzard," inspired by plumage so diverse that some individuals have been mistaken for different species. For years, nature enthusiasts across Europe have been logging buzzard sightings online—and those records have now enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and their international collaborators to build the first continent-wide picture of buzzard color—and map how it is changing.