The azor [açor], a goshawk, is a bird of prey that never lived in the Azores, and whose name was applied to these islands by mistake.
That was written in Saudades da Terra [Longings for the Land] by Gaspar Frutuoso (1522-91), our earliest historian. What Prince Henry the Navigator’s sailors found in the islands were not azors but milhafres, or common buzzards. [1] The explanation is plausible: when the navigators docked in those ports, they did not observe the birds close up, but in full flight. Since azors and buzzards possess similar size and plumage, the confusion generated by the sailors was natural, given their ignorance in matters ornithological.
Having lived for seventy years in the sixteenth century, Frutuoso was categorically correct in one regard: azors were birds that did not exist in the Azores.
Incidentally, Lieutenant Colonel José Agostinho (1888-1978), in a lecture delivered in 1966 before the microphones of Rádio Clube de Angra, [2] recalled that in the fifteenth century the azor was a highly appreciated bird on mainland Portugal, given its widespread use in the art of spearfishing — a sport that was very popular then. And he understood the lamentable confusion on the part of Portuguese sailors, noting that at the time there were no precision weapons that could have allowed for closer observation of these birds. Back then, they were caught only in traps, snares, nets, etc.
That researcher (a meteorologist, seismologist and naturalist) distinguished between azors and buzzards according to the following criteria. The azor is a rare bird with small wings and a larger tail that makes low, direct, fast flights, and rarely strays from the woods where it lives. In contrast, the buzzard, with its short tail, has enormous wings with rounded tips and operates from high above, hovering in circles and watching the ground with its keen eyesight, searching for rats, rabbits or chickens. This is the bird that our people have come to call the queimado.
Still, there are no azors in the Azores — and there are also no buzzards in these islands. Strictly speaking, and according to science, what has always lived here is the round-winged eagle.
However, the azor’s identity persists: not only did it bestow upon the archipelago its name, but even its image that, with open wings and representing the nine islands. tops the coats of arms and shields of several Azorean cities, and today is part of the heraldry of the Autonomous Region of the Azores. [3]
[1] açor [azor] (Accipiter gentilis) = Eurasian goshawk; milhafre (Buteo buteo rothschildi) = common buzzard
[2] Victor Rui Dores: José Agostinho — Lectures on Radio Clube de Angra, a collection of 20 CDs, Paulo Henrique Silva, audio editor, published by the Municipality of Angra and Radio Clube de Angra, 2023.
[3] Images from Commons Wikipedia.
Originally published in Portuguese as “Não há e nunca houve açores nos Açores” at:
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