Buzzard success

It's now Saturday morning and for the third visit in a row, as I approached the caravan hide I disturbed a buzzard. This one was sat in the trees above. Surely it's only a matter of a short while before one comes in to feed while I am here. When I left last night I had taken in all the bait because I wanted to keep them interested and hungry so that they come and feed only while I am here. In previous years this has worked really well and I got the impression that the buzzards began to associate my visits with food. It's like the " pavlova" effect…. when they see me, even though they are very cautious, they will think, "are, there must be food now". Also, based on my observations from previous years, I know that they sit watching the bait for ages checking that its safe before coming down to feed, quite often circling around before they take the plunge.

This next week or two is going to be exciting for me. As I said, I leave the band next Thursday after a concert in Exmouth Pavilion and then early the next week I leave to spend a week in Bulgaria. My nephew owns a property there and I am told that the bird watching is best during autumn migration which is at it's peak in the last week of September so it should be good.

As I sat waiting, shot gun blasts rang out reasonably close, so this may have an affect on the buzzards behaviour. I really hate this shooting, it's so alien to what I do and in my view extremely selfish not to mention cruel. All the corvids are fair game, they will tell you that this is to control the numbers but I say, who are they to have a say in the amount of crows, magpies, rooks and jackdaws that fly around…….not to mention the foxes.

The shooting stopped and at around 1050 after 2 hours of waiting I suddenly heard the call of a buzzard. It was circling above and I became excited when the call became static and I knew that there was now a buzzard perched very hear by.

Suddenly there it was, on the log with the rabbit…..success at last. Frankly I would have been quite surprised if this session hadn't had a successful outcome. I took loads of photos with both cameras and then tried to turn the camera from landscape to portrait. This slight movement was enough to spook the bird. It picked up the carcass and of f it flew. This was a massive bird and being able to pick up a rabbitproves that. It was a youngster that probably bred in the woods behind me and judging by the size a female.

Quite interestingly I used two cameras simulataneously for this session. I recently recieved my repaired camera back and I fitted one camera with a 500 prime lens and the other with a 300, interesting to see which produced the better photographs.