Wild Words
Usually we hear them before we see them. Riding on air gusting from the North, their ‘thumb’ feathers lifting to smooth the wind under a steady span of moth-like wings.
I have been watching deliberately for the buzzards all day. I am focused mainly on a pine tree above which, on another bright day with wind for lift, a pair looped and dived. It is the time of year that they could be courting, the male bird’s rollercoaster flightpath designed to impress. Binoculars trained now on the bushy bowl of upper branches, I’m hopeful that it could have been a pair beginning to nest.
Birdwatching with small, noisy children can become an almost pointless exercise, which is perhaps why I spend most of my time with an eye on the sky for buzzards and ravens. Sitting in our garden, the larger birds can be clearly heard over the shouts of the kids playing around me; the buzzards glide on thermals high above all the activity, their call piercing through the clear air. Their latin name, Buteo Buteo, echoes the peeoo peeoo cry. The species in Scotland, however, have little to cry about these days. Their population had declined over the course of the 19th century, until by the mid-20th they had all but disappeared from our skies; pesticides and
‘ I laugh when a curve of brown and cream drops quietly out of the broad, flat top of the wind-snapped pine tree just over the fence.’
persecution decimated their numbers. Changes to farming practices and new laws, such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, have resulted in a widespread recovery, and there are now an estimated 60-70,000 breeding pairs across the UK.
The brindled wings are usually spotted tipping over the roof of our house long after the buzzard has been heard, but the bird can still surprise. Having spent all weekend finding ways to gaze at the tip of the lone western pine in the distance, I laugh when – standing at my east-facing kitchen window – a curve of brown and cream drops quietly out of the broad, flat top of the wind-snapped pine tree just over the fence.
As I go about my morning, getting breakfast for the kids, tidying up, I catch sight of the birds, swinging to and fro between the pine and the belt of oak and birch further up. They return trailing long twigs, sometimes swinging round to come at the tree from a different angle and hopping up the interior boughs to their chosen site.
I can’t see the nest itself, hidden by a tangled curtain of conifer branches. Just the occasional glimpse, the shouldering of a wing, a stooping shadow – but it’s enough to know they are there.