A Buzzard story

'Let me tell you a storwie...' in the words of the comedian Frankie Howard, in reality a continuation of where I left off last time; that is regular readers will know was about the Buzzard and the Hare. Well I'm not sure but perhaps this story is about the Buzzard and the Frog (which didn't turn into a Prince). I've been watching this Buzzard for some time and was surprised it was happy to get its feet wet, as I found it in this wet patch of ground, (for a second time) hence the poor photo for evidence ... just to back up the story, (lousy pictures at distance, shooting into the sun etc). Flying from wet ground to a view point, whereupon it again flew down into other wet ground and made a kill. That is landing feet first upon the poor individual, grabbed with the feet, disesected by the beak.  I am assumng it was a frog (wet ground) as it spent five minutes taking it apart and eating whatever it had caught before returning to a vantage point. The images, tell the story. I was quite happy to get the backlit photos before ending with one leaving a perch where the sun was on my side for a change!

Wet feet

On a kill

Time to eat

Up n away

low across the field

Archetypal 'the eagle hs landed'

What else can I see?

Time for a change

Low level shadow

on me way

out of a tree

It is difficult to reconcile a paddling Buzzard who gets his feet wet and sits for hours stalking the odd frog with the merciless killer of lambs and game birds that others would have us believe – I'm not saying they don't, I've just never seen it and while most of my sightings of Buzzards have been of them circling at great heights (I would have thought a lamb/pheasant was pretty easy to spot), I have also had numerous encounters with Buzzard simply hopping around the ground, flying low and dropping out of trees on small mamals and inverterbrae as these photos demonstrate (and once a Buzzard feeding in a field of Lapwing and Golden Plover in Islip, Oxfordshire, not one batting an eyelid). No doubt they feed on carrion, but killing a full size hare (see previous) or a live and kicking lamb, I have never seen. Just a thought.