Jeremias 12:9

Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird. — The Hebrew is interrogative, Is mine heritage...? Are the birds come round about against her? The word for “bird” in both cases means a “bird of prey” (Isaías 46:11; Gênesis 15:11), and the “speckled bird” is probably, but not certainly, some less common species of vulture. The image was probably suggested by something the prophet had observed, birds of prey of one species collecting and attacking a solitary stranger of another, joined by the “beasts of the field,” the wolves and jackals and hyænas, who scent their prey. The word “speckled,” perhaps, points to the bird attacked as being of more goodly plumage than the others (one, it may be, of the kingfishers that abound in Palestine), and therefore treated as a stranger and an enemy. The fact is one which strikes every observer of bird life (Tac. Ann. vi. 28; Sueton. Cæs. c. 81).