[3] Like most buzzards, it prefers small mammals such as rodents, including gerbils, ground squirrels, voles and rats, also taking reptiles, birds and insects as well as carrion.

The paleness of the head in light morphs continues down to breast, the lower part of which having pencil thin streaks, while the belly down to flanks and trousers is a darker rufous-brown.

Also the juveniles are more streaky about the head and breast with tail going from pale whitish darkening outwards to grey-brown with irregular faint brown bars.

Possessing an almost eagle-like silhouette, it tends to appear with a protruding head with a somewhat heavy bill, long broad wings with fairly straight edges and only slightly tapering hands with rounded five-fingered end.

Due to much variation in plumage, steppe buzzards often not reliably distinguished and in distant sightings best told apart by their smaller size and differing proportions.

[30] Vagrant accidental long-legged buzzards have been documented several times in many parts of Europe, including Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

[31][32] Out of Europe in the eastern Mediterranean or Asia Minor, the long-legged buzzard is one of the most continuously found and abundant breeding resident raptors, being distributed throughout all of Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

[1] It is also widely and regularly distributed through much of the Middle East, residing almost throughout Syria, Lebanon, Israel, as well as the northern central parts of both Iraq and Iran.

The wintering areas of migrating long-legged buzzards extend through much of lower Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent including southern Afghanistan, much of Pakistan and northern India through to Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

[50] While long-legged buzzards predominantly forage in wildlands, they are also adaptable to cultivations, pastures, village outskirts and sometimes even heavily farmed areas.

[16] In the Indian subcontinent, the species may often be seen using a variety of perches including bushes, hedges, Acacia nilotica, sand dunes, haystacks, mounds and power poles.

The genus Buteo, with nearly 30 species (one of the most diverse genera of diurnal raptors), radiated through Eurasia and Africa, relatively recently in the subfamily's evolutionary history.

[62][63][64] There are two subspecies recognised:[65] While the North African race is largely sedentary some short-range dispersal, wandering occasionally to Iberia, while one moved to Senegal in October, rarely southward movements occur, such as to Burkina Faso and Lagos.

Long-legged buzzards, like many Buteo, regularly still-hunt, using tallish or high perch sites or mounds, spending long periods of time scanning the ground.

Regular perch sites while hunting may include power poles, pylons, powerlines, boulders, rocky outcrops and dead and sometimes live trees.

[3][4] Somewhat more so than many Buteo species, long-legged buzzards tends to take a great number of reptiles as prey, from fairly small to quite large sizes as well.

Main prey here were common vole (Microtus arvalis), averaging an estimated 25 g (0.88 oz) and constituting 48.4% of the diet by number and 12.59% of the biomass and the greater mole-rat (Spalax microphthalmus) and Podolsk mole-rat (Spalax zemni), both averaging an estimated 215 g (7.6 oz) and collectively comprising 22% of the diet by number and 49.2% of the biomass.

[76] Further study on the Great Hungarian Plains seems to reinforce the importance as elsewhere in eastern Europe of common voles and European hamsters in the diet of long-legged buzzards.

In Bulgaria, 68.8% of the diet was mammalian, 13.23% reptilian, 9% avian, 7.41% arthropods and other vertebrates the remaining balance, with prey varying in size from invertebrates weighing a fraction of a gram to mammals of up to 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) such as young European hare and non-native muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus).

[77] Long-legged buzzards in northeastern Greece were found to be highly reliant on the European ground squirrel which comprised 21.2% of 268 prey items there.

[79] It appears in Armenia that their diet was very reptile based, mostly small to medium-sized lizards but even the remains of a Greek tortoise (Testudo graeca) were reported.

Overall the Judean Hills long-legged buzzards preferred reptiles, at 47.2% of the foods, and birds, at 32.2%, rather strongly over mammals, 18.3%, which is not unexpected in the region's semi-desert environment.

[53][81] The predominant prey in Jordan was reportedly the fat sand rat (Psammomys obsesus) followed by again the starred agama and generally appeared not dissimilar from the diet of the species on Cyprus.

[83] In northern Iran's Khar Turan National Park, 34 remains seemed to be predominantly represented by unidentified hares, occasionally supplemented by birds, tortoises and smaller mammals like Meriones and Gerbillus species.

Of 50 prey items, here great gerbils (Rhombomys opimus) led the diet at 48%, followed by Tartar sand boa (Eryx miliaris) (18%), cape hare (Lepus capensis) (6%), goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) (6%) (likely but not certainly taken to the nest as carrion) and Mongolian finch (Bucanetes mongolicus) (6%).

Nests are fairly large structures, averaging around 71 to 99 cm (28 to 39 in) in diameter, as in Bulgaria and Kazakhstan, respectively, but could easily exceed 1 m (3.3 ft) across in some cases.

[74][87] In Bulgaria, in the absence of natural rocks, the long-legged buzzards largely adapted to nesting alongside manmade quarries rather than use trees.

[3] Breeding success rates are relatively quite poorly known in long-legged buzzards, with many sources failing to find extensive data on this topic.

[3][48] On the other hand, since the 1990s, there have been recent increases reported in Europe, mainly Bulgaria, where expanding population and post-breeding dispersals have enlarged their range in Hungarian steppes.

Arabia has thought to experience a 5% decline in long-legged buzzard populations, perhaps due to overly extensive conversion of habitat to farmland and stone quarries.