Taking a closer look at Ireland's buzzards

Ireland was without large birds of prey for over a century and their return has caused surprises, writes Dick Warner

My son came back from taking the dog for a walk along the lane rather excited by a bird he’d seen. This was unusual because he doesn’t normally have a great interest in birds. He’d walked round a corner and encountered, at close quarters, a very large bird of prey sitting on a fence post. They gazed at each other for a second or two then the bird unhurriedly spread a huge pair of wings and flapped off. He thought it might have been an eagle.

I de-briefed him carefully and, of course, it wasn’t an eagle it was a buzzard. But I completely understood his shock and awe at seeing the bird at such close range. Ireland was without large birds of prey for over a century and their return has caused surprises.

The fence post the bird was sitting on was close to a spot where a farming neighbour puts out winter fodder for cattle. Such spots can attract rats hoping to glean seeds from the fodder. Buzzards are very fond of rats. They are not equipped like a hawk or a falcon to catch birds in flight.

Occasionally they take birds on the ground, particularly the young of ground nesting birds, but they specialise in small mammals up to the size of rabbits and young hares. They are also very adaptable when it comes to things to eat and will sometimes concentrate on hunting earthworms in ploughed fields or frogs travelling to their spawning ponds.

They eat carrion too and are just as happy with a rabbit or a rat that’s been killed by a car as one they’ve killed themselves. In America the name buzzard is applied to a totally different family of birds that are almost exclusively carrion eaters. An American turkey buzzard is actually a New World vulture.

I believe, on circumstantial evidence, that the virtual disappearance of grey squirrels over the past 10 years in the part of Leinster I live in is largely due to the reappearance of buzzards. The experts tend to attribute it to the spread of pine martens but the squirrels started to disappear when the buzzards arrived and there are a lot more buzzards than pine martens round here. Grey squirrels spend a lot of time foraging on the ground and this makes them particularly susceptible to buzzard attacks.

These attacks take two main forms. Either the bird soars on outstretched wings, often several hundred metres above ground, looking for prey. It can then stoop, in a rather clumsy dive, on an unsuspecting rabbit. I’ve watched this and it’s a bit ineffectual, largely because such a big bird makes a lot of noise when it dives because of the wind rushing through its feathers and this warns the rabbit. The second method is to take up a strategic perch and watch for prey it can pounce on. That’s why the buzzard was on that fence post.