record shots: what a buzzkill

Time for more filthy record shots I'm afraid. I want to share pictures of as many of the species I've seen here as possible you see and sometimes things get ugly. Our field has just been resown with grass seed for next year's grazing and accordingly is generally full of gulls. On saturday afternoon though I pulled into the drive and saw nothing in the field. I was just pondering how odd that was when this guy popped up out of the dirt and flapped away.

It's a common buzzard (Buteo buteo - same genus as the American Red Tail Hawk and similar bird, american readers) and the gulls did not like its presence one bit - hence their absence and subsequent mobbing of it.

Ironically, the buzzard was probably not in the field hoping to feast on gull but in fact probably grubbing around for worms. This species has a diverse diet but tends to prefer carrion and invertebrate prey to bigger animals (though it can take much bigger stuff if so minded).

I grabbed my camera off the car seat and started shooting and the above are the heavily cropped awful result. Buzzards are rare here, a couple of breeding pairs on the island maybe (and those are recent arrivals) so it was a nice garden tick and a nice record to have.