The rise of Buzzards

It's a good news story, for once. :cool:

We have a few in our area, along with kestrels & sparrow hawks. Only thing is, there are less garden birds than a few years ago. :(
 
There was a stack of nine buzzards over the golf course yesterday afternoon. Didn't see them displaying but I expect they were when I was otherwise engaged. Almost always see a couple of kestrels and the occasional sparrowhawk.
 
Been seeing Buzzards here in East Hertfordshire for quite a while now and more recently a Red Kite, beautiful sight to see.
 
Driving trains between large and small towns/cities I get to see a lot of wildlife and I've noticed a huge increase in the number of buzzards. I would estimate there are about 3-4 times as many as there are kestrels (last year seemed very bad for kestrel numbers). Normally I see them on line side fence posts or grabbing a quick carrion meal from rail-roadkill and occasionally see some that weren't quick enough themselves!
 
I think we have a pair over Harpenden, initially I thought it was a red kite but the wings are much whiter, so I guess they are buzzards. Will try and get some snaps.
Matt
 
If you're not sure, the tail is the easy differentiator - kites have a forked tail whereas buzzards do not. Once familiar with them both, I find you can be instinctively tells what's what at quite a distance based on their general 'jizz'. But don't ask me to spot if a buzzard is a common, rough legged or honey!
 
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They don't seem to have many natural enemies, (apart from us)

but the average nest is 3 and 2 of those will die before the 3 year old maturity age and they then live for an average of 8 to 10years

so the mathematicians should be able to work our when we will be completely over-run by them
 
Same as foxes. Their numbers follow the fortunes of their prey animals, so as the predators get more successful, they take more prey, as the amount of prey falls, the predator numbers fall since there's not enough prey to support the enlarged population. As the predators' numbers decline due to starvation, the prey population recovers and as those numbers rise, so do the predators'.

They also do fall to other raptors. A friend has a series of shots of a Peregrine taking a buzzard out over Exeter a couple of years ago.

"Only" 5 in the stack on Thursday morning.
 
Oddly enough I saw my first wild one in my home town today, soaring high in the sky, (viewed from my bedroom window) I'd seen a captive bred one years ago as I had one myself for a while
 
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