Birds of Prey - Help needed to Identify (1 Viewer)

[Alfazzel90]

Hi all,

Pleased to meet you (first time poster and new member!)

I've got a few photos from recent trips to Scotland and Slovenia but I'm a bit of a newbie to or ornithology, so need some help identifying.

First image, is (I guess) some sort of Eagle? Taken over the mountains in Bled, Slovenia.

Second image - no clue, but looks like some bird of prey (it was soaring Eagle/Kite style above the trees, but seems to be more multicoloured)

Third and fourth image - these ones were taken in Skye, Scotland and given the size of the prey in the talons I'm guessing a Golden Eagle but deferring to your better judgement 🙂

Any help greatly appreciated and apologies if the images are unclear....I was very far away from all of these so it tested the limit of the camera zoom!

 

[dwatsonbirder]

Welcome to birdforum!
You have 1) Common buzzard (5 obvious primaries) 2) Hooded Crow (note contrasting grey mantle with wings, also large blunt bill) and 3 & 4) Common buzzard (5 obvious primaries).
Don't let the farming community see images 3 & 4, I'm sure that there would be a furore over the misinterpretation of scavenging a lamb...

 

[KC Foggin]

Hi there Alfazzel and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum
We're glad you found us and please join in wherever you like.

 

[Chris G6 UXU]

Hello and welcome to the forum, enjoy and all the best.

 

[Lisa W]

Hi, welcome to the forum. I think you will find us a friendly and helpful group.

 

[Alfazzel90]

Thanks all for the replies so far - lovely to meet you all and looking forward to posting more regularly as I get the opportunity to get out more with my camera.

Thanks for all the help identifying these birds, really appreciated. Re pics 3&4 - can a buzzard really take a prey of that size?? If so, that is very impressive, I've seen buzzards up close back home and wouldn't have thought it possible!

 

[Fritz73]

Hola! Welcome to Birdforum

 

[delia todd]

Hi Alfazzel and a warm welcome from me too.

I'm sure you will enjoy it here and I hope to hear about all the birds you see when out and about.

 

[Butty]

3-4. The prey looks more like a rabbit than a lamb - but I still wonder if this could be golden eagle with the innermost primary-finger hidden - the exposed primaries are very long, but of course the angle of the photos makes it impossible to judge the wing-shape. Do you have more photos?

It would be good if an admin could move this to the Bird ID Q&A forum.

 

[THE_FERN]

3-4. The prey looks more like a rabbit than a lamb - but I still wonder if this could be golden eagle with the innermost primary-finger hidden - the exposed primaries are very long, but of course the angle of the photos makes it impossible to judge the wing-shape. Do you have more photos?

It would be good if an admin could move this to the Bird ID Q&A forum.

Agree this is a rabbit. However, I don't think it's an eagle: I feel the head and beak would be more prominent than here in that case.

 

[dwatsonbirder]

I thought the rear legs of the prey item looked somewhat uniform in their musculature, with no obvious kink in the knee (?) joint. The head and ear shape in the second image also looks a bit beefy (and pale?) for a Rabbit? Obviously this could be down to the combination of predation and image quality, and tbh, I hope I am wrong!

 

[Alfazzel90]

3-4. The prey looks more like a rabbit than a lamb - but I still wonder if this could be golden eagle with the innermost primary-finger hidden - the exposed primaries are very long, but of course the angle of the photos makes it impossible to judge the wing-shape. Do you have more photos?

It would be good if an admin could move this to the Bird ID Q&A forum.

Hi Butty,

I have a couple more photos I'll attach here. Just for context, I was MILES away from this bird. We were in a car and saw this soaring over a mountain on the Isle of Skye in the horizon and pulled over. Apologies for the poor quality, I shot these on a Sony HX400v, which has an incredible built in zoom, which is the only reason I was able to catch it at all.

As a comparison, in the last two photos I've attached a pic of what I was told was a young Sea Eagle (also on Skye) I was much closer to and a Red Kite which I spotted in a tree from at least 100 metres away with the same camera.

Not sure if that helps at all, but have really appreciated all the comments so far. Even if it is just a buzzard, it was still a really cool sighting 🙂

 

[Butty]

1. White-tailed eagle.
2. Common buzzard. Plumage of underwing is visible.
3-5. Plausibly common buzzard.

 

[Peregrine Took]

After looking at picture 6, the grey head looks like that of a female hen harrier. I'm far from being an expert, but I've seen white tailed and golden eagles and it's not an eagle - for starters, the beak is way too small. And the prey is a young rabbit - that's pretty clear from picture 1134.
.

 

[Butty]

picture 6, the grey head looks like that of a female hen harrier

Red kite, as the OP has said.

 

[Peregrine Took]

Red kite, as the OP has said.

Yup, I missed the fact that the last picture was of a red kite and not the bird(s) in the other photos. That threw me. I'm pretty confident about the rabbit!

.

 

[delia todd]

Hi again Alfazzel

As this discussion is still on-going, I've moved the thread to the ID forum.

 

[Evan Atkinson]

Pic 3 in post number 12 is a White-tailed eagle, can just make out the very large hooked beak, and the structure seems off for common buzzard, including wing size (yes I know judging a birds size without another bird present is notoriously unreliable) but it definitely doesn't look correct to be a common buzzard. The bird carrying the prey (a rabbit is what some are saying) is a common buzzard, you can see the underwing markings.

 

[Peregrine Took]

Pic 3 in post number 12 is a White-tailed eagle, can just make out the very large hooked beak, and the structure seems off for common buzzard...

Exactly what I thought, but was afraid to say! In some ways, the worst picture, but for me the chunky head looked unmistakably like an eagle.

 

[tconzemi]

Pic 3 in post number 12 is a blurry something in the sky (blurry = looks larger and broader as it is), could well be Buzzard...