Buzzards re-colonise Ireland
It was soaring a couple of hundred metres above the headland of a tillage field. Suddenly it crumpled as if it had been shot and plummeted to the ground.
It hadn’t been shot. It had spotted something edible on the ground and dived on it. Unfortunately it was too far away for me to make out whether the stoop was successful and, if so, what the quarry was. But I could make a few educated guesses, because a lot of research has been done on the diet of buzzards, some of it in this country.
One of the reasons buzzards have re-colonised Ireland so rapidly and so successfully in recent decades is that they’re adaptable and can utilise a wide variety of food. Having said that, there’s no doubt that their first choice of prey is a rabbit. One recent study noted a pair of buzzards (they mate for life) will successfully rear more young if there are rabbits within hunting range of their nest.
They are large, strong birds and have no problem flying some distance to a tree top nest with a full-grown rabbit in their talons. They have even been known to tackle hares, which are much heavier.
The one I was watching was hunting on the wing — soaring silently and scrutinising the ground below. But they will sometimes perch on a telegraph pole or a tree and dive from there on to anything edible.
Probably their second favourite prey items are rats and, in the parts of the country where they’re found, bank voles. They also take some birds — rooks and jackdaws are the commonest prey, though a number of other species have been recorded. These birds are almost invariably killed on the ground. Buzzards don’t really have the aerial skills to catch birds in flight, as sparrow hawks or peregrine falcons do.
They’re partial to carrion as well. Last year I was driving down to the village and I passed a buzzard on the road verge with its wings hooded over some piece of road-kill. It glared at me in a very possessive way, as if daring me to try and take its prize away.
If you have a pair of buzzards in your area another thing to look out for at this time of year is their courtship ritual. A male buzzard trying to impress a potential new mate or to get an existing mate in the mood for breeding will perform spectacular aerobatics, flying to a height and then spiralling vertically back down, spreading its wings just before it hits the ground. These courtship antics are usually accompanied by quite a lot of calling. The call of a buzzard is remarkably like the mewing of a cat.
The blackbird is a member of the thrush family and only the male is black. Females are brown and immatures are speckled. They are among our commonest garden birds and also widely distributed in the open countryside, particularly in areas with hedgerows.
The males are wonderful singers and this is the month when they’re most vocal, particularly at dawn and dusk on a calm day. The songs often include improvisations and they also have a harsh, yelping alarm call. They have a varied diet and a particular fondness for fruit and berries. They will also shuffle noisily through leaf litter or scratch up loose garden soil looking for invertebrates.
Female blackbirds will now be starting to build mud-lined nests in which they will lay an average of four bluish-green eggs with brown blotches.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
