Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 12:9

"Is my heritage unto me as a speckled bird of prey? are the birds of prey against her round about? go ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, bring them to devour." — Jeremiah 12:9 (ASV)

My heritage is to me as a speckled bird. — The Hebrew is interrogative, Is my heritage ... Are the birds gathered around against her? The word for “bird” in both cases means a “bird of prey” (Isaiah 46:11; Genesis 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, jackals, and hyenas—who scent their prey. The word “speckled,” perhaps, points to the bird attacked as being of finer 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 (Tacitus, Annals 6.28; Suetonius, Caesar c. 81).