Magical creatures Buzzards

Wee-ooo, pee-ooo… My notebooks are full of my attempts to transcribe the wailing call of buzzards. That high, echoing call is so distinctive. A buzzard’s call is one of the iconic sounds of the British countryside. Certainly one of the loudest calls made by any of our birds. I’ve listened to them piercing the air on clear, still days, heard them reverberating off cliffs and bouncing off hillsides. I’m fascinated by how their calls vary over different terrain and in different weather.

Buzzards call in aggression, agitation and courtship. They are fiercely territorial and squabbles with trespassers are noisy affairs. Where I live, buzzards share airspace with ravens and are at constant loggerheads, particularly in breeding season. When they’re mobbed, by ravens or other corvids, a buzzard’s call sounds shorter and more agitated.

Often you hear a buzzard before you see it. Look up and see them spiralling on a rising thermal. Squat in shape with a short tail, short neck and ‘long-fingered’ wings. Watch for the characteristic ‘three flaps then a glide’, as they work to gain height. The smaller male buzzard rises more quickly than the female. When you see a pair of soaring buzzards, they’re often one above the other, the male the higher bird.

There are now nearly 70,000 breeding pairs in the British Isles, making the ‘common buzzard’ our commonest bird of prey. Not so long ago, the buzzard was a rarity across much of the country. In the 19th century, their numbers were decimated by gamekeepers, only clinging on in Devon and Cornwall, parts of Wales, the west of Scotland and north-west England.

That the buzzard has recolonised most of the country, spreading east, is a remarkable turnaround, explained by a new era of tolerance and by the buzzard’s adaptability in both where it lives and what it eats.

By far the most important prey for buzzards are field voles. Also rabbits, moles, frogs, earthworms and carrion. They will eat a surprisingly large quantity of insects – grubs and beetles especially. They are expert, too, at clearing up roadkill. Sometimes buzzards hunt from a perch, watching the ground from a tree or post. Sometimes they hang in the wind, scanning the ground below. They even hunt on foot, foraging for worms in damp fields. Often slow and heavy in flight, buzzards are also capable of astonishing bursts of speed and agility. Many times I have been taken aback by a buzzard’s turn of speed and on several occasions have wished-mistaken a buzzard into a hawk because it was flying so fast through the trees. They may, thankfully, be common once more, but buzzards never cease to thrill me with their presence and their beautiful calls.

James Macdonald Lockhart is the author of Raptor: a Journey Through Birds (Fourth Estate).