There is just one bird that features in today's photos. It is a buzzard. I remember when they were not that common in East Anglia. They are relatively so now.
I saw this one as I was approaching the WWT Welney reserve this morning. I was going fairly slowly. That's what you do on Fenland roads if you have any regard for your own safety. They set decided traps for the unwary. I realised that the buzzard was heading for a post, on which it then landed. So I slowed to a stop, about 6 metres (20 feet) from it.
The buzzard saw us. It seemed unfussed. It was looking for worms on the bank - a favourite food of this bird of prey, and was finding them. It obviously saw us, sitting in the car, as no threat. So we put the hazard warning lights on and sat and watched it. When it moved a couple of fence posts down the bank, we followed it. Again, it was not fussed.
The pictures were taken on an iPhone, through the car windscreen.
What a bird.
What a moment.
And yes, the birdwatching that followed was good (whitefronted and taiga bean geese plus 4,000 or more lapping migrating), but not much was going to beat sharing time with a buzzard like that.
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What beautiful pictures. What a beautiful bird.
After Cambridge, If you do eventually arrange one of your meetings in the north, might I suggest that you come to Leeds. Here we have plenty of Red Kites soaring over the city. From my house I see, every day, up to eight. Some swoop fairly low, but I have yet to see one really close up like your Buzzard.
Thanks.
I like kites, but not nearly as much as buzzards, and this monent was nothing like any I had experienced before with them. It was luck, and having a phone in my pocket.
wonderful pictures – thank you – and, re my birding, I have had to make do with ‘Swan Lake’ (Varna International Ballet – Bulgarian, but very international dancers, including one English) – Tchaikovsky, so music good and, as usual with that Company, beautiful costumes – oh – and the dancing (despite the difficulties of Buxton Opera House stage) was good too! Now off to ‘The Nutcracker’ – meanwhile the Canada Geese are still absent here, presumably not enough tourists to feed them?
Enjoy!
There were Canada geese, greylags and Egyption geese as well as white fronts and tundra been geese for me this morning. Not bad!