The more Peter Rabbit thought it over, the stranger it seemed to him that such big people as Ol’ Mistah Buzzard and Mrs. Buzzard should be content to have no nest. If he hadn’t seen with his own eyes those two Buzzard babies in the great hollow log, and if he hadn’t heard with his own ears Ol’ Mistah Buzzard say that when there was no big hollow log handy Mrs. Buzzard would lay her eggs on top of a stump, and when there was no stump handy she would lay them on the bare ground, he wouldn’t, he was sure, have been able to believe that anything of the kind could be true.

There was no one with whom he could talk the matter over save Sammy Jay. You see Peter had promised not to give the Buzzard secret away, and Sammy was the only one Peter knew of who also knew that secret. So the first chance he got Peter asked Sammy what he thought of the matter, and if he supposed there was any good reason why the Buzzards didn’t build a nest.

“Shiftlessness!” replied Sammy scornfully. “Just plain shiftlessness. They are too lazy and shiftless to go to the trouble of building a nest, that’s all. Ol’ Mistah Buzzard is just naturally lazy, and Mrs. Buzzard is just like him. Have you ever seen Ol’ Mistah Buzzard do a stroke of work since you’ve known him?”

Peter couldn’t remember that he had and said so.

“Of course you haven’t,” asserted Sammy in the same scornful voice as before. “Of course you haven’t. Why? Because he hasn’t done any work. All he does is just sail round and round in the blue, blue sky or sit in the sun on that old dead tree. When he’s sailing round and round he doesn’t move his wings any more than he has to. He doesn’t even catch his own food.”

“I don’t hold that against him,” declared Peter promptly, thinking how he had always to be on the watch to escape Hooty the Owl and the members of the Hawk family, “but now you mention the matter, I wonder what he does eat. I hadn’t thought of it before. Do you know what he does eat?”

“Yes,” replied Sammy, “I know.” There was both scorn and disgust in his voice this time. “He eats things that no one else would think of eating. He eats dead things, and he don’t seem to care how long they have been dead. He is the most shiftless fellow I know of. You are rather shiftless yourself, Peter, but compared with Ol’ Mistah Buzzard you are almost industrious. I can’t understand how any one can be so shiftless and lazy. It doesn’t surprise me any to find out that he and Mrs. Buzzard don’t build a nest. I guess I would have been more surprised to find that they did. I know a good many shiftless folks, but none equal to Ol’ Mistah Buzzard and Mrs. Buzzard. Sometimes I wonder if the reason they have bald heads is because they are too lazy to grow feathers on them.”

Sammy grinned at his own joke, and Peter laughed. “You certainly have got a mighty small opinion of the Buzzard family, Sammy,” said he.

“I certainly have,” retorted Sammy. “I may have faults, but laziness isn’t one of them. The idea of great big able-bodied birds like Mistah and Mrs. Buzzard being content to have their eggs on the ground without so much as a stick or a straw under them! I call it a disgrace to the whole feathered tribe.”

Sammy Jay flirted his tail, tossed his head, and then flew away, leaving Peter to think things over and, I suspect, with a lot less respect for Ol’ Mistah Buzzard than he had had before.