Bird that came back from extinction

LAST week, an old pal reported seeing a pair of buzzards soaring over the woodland near Garretstown, east of Kinsale and, a few days later, I saw a single adult sailing high over the Bandon River.

Magnificent birds, we may soon have the opportunity of again seeing them sailing high in Irish skies. Once widespread, they suffered two extinctions here in the last century but re-colonisation from Scotland resulted, each time, in renewed breeding success. Now, spreading south from strongholds in Donegal, Monaghan and Louth, there are small breeding populations in Wicklow and the Midlands, and two pairs successfully nested in Co Cork in 2004.

Slightly smaller than a raven, they actually seem larger, perhaps because of their broad, rounded wings, robust body and broad tails, normally fanned out in flight. The plumage is gradations of brown, dark above, and pale beneath with blackish bars and streaks.

In congenial circumstances, they are wonderfully restful to watch as they circle with slow flaps of their wings. I remember watching a pair in the sky above the Brecon Beacons in Wales as I lay in a meadow of a summer day, pointing them out to the children who tried to imitate their mewling cries, loud in the silence of the hills around us.

They seemed almost lazy as they flew but, in fact, were tirelessly scanning the earth below. Upon seeing the movement of a prey item, they would drop in a steep dive, their victim often no larger than a beetle.

I once saw a bird hovering — also in Wales — wings bent against a gale; and sometimes, on breezy days, I’ve seen them fold their wings back and plunge earthwards before sailing upward again, bringing to mind Gerard Manley-Hopkins’ line about the windhover, the kestrel, striding “... upon the rein of a wimpling wing/In his ecstasy!”

In courtship display, buzzards will roll or turn in the air, and when mobbed and attacked by rooks or gulls, will sometimes turn over and strike out with their talons.

Like all the raptors, buzzards’ eyes are farther to the front of their heads than those of most other birds. As a result, the visual fields of the two eyes overlap and provide a central area of three-dimensional, binocular vision, this enabling them to judge distance very precisely.

In the buzzard’s spherical eye, the cells of the retina combine rods of intense light-gathering power and cones that enhance sharp vision and colour differentiation. These cells number one million per square millimetre (the area of a pinhead), compared with a mere 200,000 cells in our human eyes. Thus, the ability of a buzzard to discern detail is eight times keener than ours. The difference can be illustrated on a TV screen, where the image is sharpened by greatly increasing the number of lines.

A return of buzzards to Ireland would benefit agriculture. Their diet largely consists of animals and birds often considered inimical to farming, like rabbits, rats, pigeons and rooks. The fact that they will also feed on carrion would keep pest numbers in check, while they present no threat to healthy lambs or other livestock.

In the past, gamekeepers and strychnine wiped them out as did the disappearance of rabbits, an important part of their diet, during the deliberately-introduced myxomatosis epidemics in the mid 1950s. However, gamekeepers are less numerous than before and the use of strychnine was banned in 1991. Ireland offers large areas of suitable habitat, coasts, farmland, moors and wooded estates.

In conclusion of my song of praise for these awe-inspiring birds, may I say that the habit of elderly Americans of addressing their contemporaneous friends as “Y’old buzzard!” always puzzles me. It is surely offensive to the image of a singularly beautiful creature to imply that a grizzled old fogey, long having moulted his finest feathers, should in any way resemble it.

“Y’old turkey vulture!” might be appropriate, particularly if the friend is bald and florid. Buzzards, known by Linnaean name Buteo, are found worldwide but the 12 Buteo species that roam the American skies are called hawks. As a result, North Americans who use the term “buzzard” have probably never knowingly seen the bird so named, and use the term as an affectionate greeting for arthritic and unlovely old friends quite innocently.