Buzzards prefer to dine on rabbit, not lamb

RECENTLY in this column I wrote about the anomaly of having legal shooting seasons for bird species that are of conservation concern.

It provoked quite a reaction, with some readers agreeing with me and others disagreeing. Red grouse were the birds that provoked the most reaction Grouse shooting as a sport is deeply embedded in our outdoor heritage. Gun-dog breeds like the Irish red setter were bred specifically to hunt them. And some readers claim that grouse are nothing like as endangered as I stated. The difficulty here is that there’s a lack of hard scientific data about a bird which, because of its preferred habitat, is rather difficult to count. In order to try and gather a bit of unscientific data I’d like to ask any readers who have come across grouse recently to get in touch and tell me whether it’s their impression that the species is declining or increasing in the area concerned. If I get useful information I’ll return to the topic on this page at some stage in the future.

Meanwhile, my son came home for the weekend and asked if there were any eagles in the area. I told him that eagles were extremely unlikely in Co Kildare. But he said he was sure he’d seen one when he was driving up from the local village. It was at the edge of the road eating a rabbit. I soon established that it was a buzzard not an eagle — it’s an easy mistake to make if you’re not used to seeing large birds of prey — and explained that they were spreading rapidly around Ireland and had first bred in our area about 10 years ago.