Common or Honey Buzzard? (1 Viewer)

[tmgstevens]

Spotted today in Wiltshire

 

[wheatearlp]

Common Buzzard for, amongst other reasons:
White band on breast in first & third photos. Multiple narrow tail bands in second photo.
Bill & head shape & colour, particularly in third photo.

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Common.

 

[tmgstevens]

Thanks - it's very light which is what confused me. Seems to be living in the garden which is nice!

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Thanks - it's very light which is what confused me. Seems to be living in the garden which is nice!

The best indicator of honey buzzard is shape. Less bulky than a common buzzard and the head is smaller and slimmer, with a small beak that seems to extend further forward. The long tail is rounded at the corners and has widely spaced barring. Wing shape is different too, often showing a distinctive cranked leading edge with a straight trailing edge.

Colour is a poor indicator. I'm just back from watching the start of the spring honey buzzard migration, when thousands can go overhead in a single day. One of the things that attracts me to them is how variable the plumage is. Some of them are as white as ospreys on the underside, while others are as dark as high-cocoa plain chocolate. Most are a multitude of varieties in between This shot is one on the in-between ones, tending towards dark. The really dark ones don't even show the barring on the breast, just solid brown

 

[Farnboro John]

Just to be clear after BW's comment above, Common Buzzards are also highly variable in overall colour, from nearly white underneath to just about all dark. The one the OP photographed is not particularly light but well within the compass of unremarkable Common Buzzards.

John

 

[Andy Adcock]

A bit early for HB?

 

[Barred Wobbler]

A bit early for HB?

They should be arriving about now. The big influx over the Strait of Gibraltar usually gets really going around the start of May after a slow build-up towards the end of April. This year they were a bit late getting going, with the first big movement being a flow of about 3,000 birds that came over in relatively calm conditions on the 7th May. Unfortunately the wind picked up that evening to about a Force 7 Easterly on the Strait and stayed that way for the rest of that week, before lessening on the 12th. The honeys kept coming during the blow, but they were spread by the wind west along the coast towards Bolonia and Barbate. They should be tailing off about now - it's a short and intense migration.

It's about 3 days flying from the Strait to the Pyrenees and about the same across France, so any of the few birds arriving in Britain will have entered Spain about a week or more earlier.

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Just to be clear after BW's comment above, Common Buzzards are also highly variable in overall colour, from nearly white underneath to just about all dark. The one the OP photographed is not particularly light but well within the compass of unremarkable Common Buzzards.

John

Very true. There aren't enough pages in the bird books to show the variations in colour of either species. They are endless, like fingerprints.

 

[lockbreeze926]

Ah, the old Buteo Digitoimpressionem (vagum).