buzzards everywhere!

[vicky@glos]

Hi all,
Just wanted to tell you of my sightings this week.

On Wednesday I saw 4 buzzards and 2 kesterals.

And on Thursday I was 7 buzzards and 3 kesterals.

I saw these all withing Gloucestershire.

So if anyone has not got the tick of the buzzard in their note book just come to gloucestershire. They are everywhere!

Best if you stop in your car and just look out for them. I saw two on a roundabout at Chippenham.

Vicky@glos.

[Ashley beolens]

They seem to be increasing in numbers, In North Bucks they are fast becoming the commonest raptor.

I found a pale phase bird on Tuesday, it certainly got my heart racing, what I wouldn't have given for a white tail!

[peteh]

we dont have buzzards in the isle of man :(
they are only seen here once every blue moon when there flying over.
booooooo

[winkle]

Back and breeding in Kent.

Even had the manager of a large estate that has a large shoot, phone and tell me with great pride and excitement, that they had Buzzards nesting on the estate.

How attitudes have changed!

[jayhunter]

Last Saturday I saw one feeding in a field full of seagulls, it was the pale variety. It was hunched up facing away from me so I could not see what it was feeding upon. The field was quite waterlogged so I assume the gulls were feeding on earthworms or such like. Against the gulls the buzzard looked immense, wish I knew what had attracted it as we don't see many in my neck of the woods (two in about ten years).

[richard dunn]

15 years ago up here in northumberland, to see a buzzard in the county and get that county year tick was a major event. now when out and about even lowland farmland has them. just recently i saw 12 during 8 hours birding how "common" the common buzzard has become.

Any ideas why?

[winkle]

No longer persecuted and DDT isn't around anymore.

There are very telling maps in one of the New Naturalist Series from, I think, the 60s that shows the density of Buzzards and Gamekeepers. They are a mirror image of each other.

[Nina P]

Thank heaven they stopped the persecution, I regard myself as very lucky to have my place surrounded with buzzards, this morning two females circling, one broke away and joined up with another from the NW sector, then another took off from the N field (directly behind my home) then another joined from the E sector, (this one was male) and another one was calling from somewhere behind the trees NNW area, all this in less than three minutes!! The thing that puzzles me is why persecute them when their main diet is rabbit? I know the crows give them a bad time, and they are known to have the odd unguarded chick, but where is the need to kill them? Nina.

[winkle]

Just dogma. Anything with tooth or claw was considered a threat. Those days are fading away.

We once went a little way down the line in re-introducing Red Kite in Kent. We canvassed a number of landowers, most of which have shoots, and all were for it. Happy to have the birds around, happy to have the birds released on their land.

The project never got off the ground though, as it was considered that Kites would spread here anyway and how right they were!

[Chris Monk]

Buzzards seem to move into the Kite reintroduction areas as if they feel it is good habitat and feeding due to Kites being there first

[Chris Monk]

Try this link for a good wallpaper of a Kite:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/r.goedegebuur/plaatjes/rodewouwp1.html

Try these web sites:

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/redkite/default.asp

http://www.gigrin.co.uk/w/

http://www.chilternsaonb.org/


Have you come across this book?

The Red Kite

Ian Carter

Illustrated by Dan Powell and containing a series of colour photographs,
this book on one of Europe's most elegant birds follows Roger Lovegrove's
'The Kites Tale' and updates the story. From the struggles to maintain a
native population in Wales the book gets right up-to-date.

Arlequin Press. Hardback;187pp.Illustrations, photos, tables and figures.

£22.50

ISBN: 1 900159 61 9

Best wishes,
Chris Monk