Since seeing two juvenile Honey-buzzards this season, a dark chocolate one on the 1st and a very white bird on 2nd September (https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=366863), I've been looking out keenly for them. No HBs have been up in the skies (unless too high to see), but low over the oaks here I've had two brief glimpses of what looked to have been a dark juvenile (no photos). The last adults I saw were the pair soaring with the dark juvenile on 1st September.
On 9th September around noon, I was standing with a friend on the eastern side of a big field in the next valley, when suddenly there was a volley of gun-shots from the hunting place further west (it sounded like practice shooting on the premises, lots of volleys all afternoon). At that first explosion of noise, a buzzard-sized raptor flew out of trees at the far southwest corner of the field and into an oak along the field's western boundary. Some moments later, I saw it exit from that oak to fly further on across the field to a larger lone oak. As I made my way towards that tree, it flew out again, not to the near woods bordering the field to the north, but covering the much longer distance southwards, back across the field to return to the woods from which it had been disturbed.
Supple fluid wings low over the field, it appeared to be of a light warm colour under the midday September sun.
I must have been mesmerized, I did not have my usual responses (chatty friend by my side). But it meant that I got to see the bird more properly than if I had been looking for the camera or binoculars. I watched it fly those three stretches, the third time a good distance all the way across an open field. I took only a single photo before it reached the woods it wished to return to, by the stream.
Its behaviour chimes well with my idea of how the juveniles would be at the end of the season, trying to feed themselves on their own as secretively as possible before they set out. Not in the open, calling and soaring - around this time, there were 3 CBs in the air, and 2 STEs were over the slopes some minutes before, all with their calls. This bird had kept to itself, in the woods.
While I am still seeing in my mind's eye that bird's graceful flight low across the field, my husband who crops and re-sizes these photos for me said, "where is the bird?". Now he too finds the image intriguing.
Is it possible to see from this bleariest of photos if it was a Honey-buzzard? An ample tail with rounded corners, a dark terminal band with a white edge? I can't see if the uppertail coverts are pale. The left wing where it comes over the rump appears to be white-edged. Extensively dark fingers, pale hand, dark secondaries but with white in the coverts? I have never noticed so much white in the upperwings of adults [just found this in Forsman, with photo of a juvenile : "Lighter birds often show a pale area on the upperwing coverts" ... I guess we can't see that reliably in this photo].
Sorry for this long account; in the lateness of the season, the circumstances of the sighting feel to have been special, and so I decided to post. If it's unlikely that it was an HB, it would be better to know! And if it was an HB (a juvenile?), it would give me a glimpse of their habits and possible habitat.
On 9th September around noon, I was standing with a friend on the eastern side of a big field in the next valley, when suddenly there was a volley of gun-shots from the hunting place further west (it sounded like practice shooting on the premises, lots of volleys all afternoon). At that first explosion of noise, a buzzard-sized raptor flew out of trees at the far southwest corner of the field and into an oak along the field's western boundary. Some moments later, I saw it exit from that oak to fly further on across the field to a larger lone oak. As I made my way towards that tree, it flew out again, not to the near woods bordering the field to the north, but covering the much longer distance southwards, back across the field to return to the woods from which it had been disturbed.
Supple fluid wings low over the field, it appeared to be of a light warm colour under the midday September sun.
I must have been mesmerized, I did not have my usual responses (chatty friend by my side). But it meant that I got to see the bird more properly than if I had been looking for the camera or binoculars. I watched it fly those three stretches, the third time a good distance all the way across an open field. I took only a single photo before it reached the woods it wished to return to, by the stream.
Its behaviour chimes well with my idea of how the juveniles would be at the end of the season, trying to feed themselves on their own as secretively as possible before they set out. Not in the open, calling and soaring - around this time, there were 3 CBs in the air, and 2 STEs were over the slopes some minutes before, all with their calls. This bird had kept to itself, in the woods.
While I am still seeing in my mind's eye that bird's graceful flight low across the field, my husband who crops and re-sizes these photos for me said, "where is the bird?". Now he too finds the image intriguing.
Is it possible to see from this bleariest of photos if it was a Honey-buzzard? An ample tail with rounded corners, a dark terminal band with a white edge? I can't see if the uppertail coverts are pale. The left wing where it comes over the rump appears to be white-edged. Extensively dark fingers, pale hand, dark secondaries but with white in the coverts? I have never noticed so much white in the upperwings of adults [just found this in Forsman, with photo of a juvenile : "Lighter birds often show a pale area on the upperwing coverts" ... I guess we can't see that reliably in this photo].
Sorry for this long account; in the lateness of the season, the circumstances of the sighting feel to have been special, and so I decided to post. If it's unlikely that it was an HB, it would be better to know! And if it was an HB (a juvenile?), it would give me a glimpse of their habits and possible habitat.
