Common Buzzard

Buzzards, like Red Kites, have also been making a comeback after years of persecution by gamekeepers and the impact of pesticides severely affecting them. They also suffered a sharp decline in the 1950s when large numbers of rabbits, their favourite food, died from myxomatosis.

Usually seen singly or in pairs, they are larger than a Carrion Crow and can be a bit variable in plumage but have a couple of giveaway traits. They have a slightly streaky brown back, paler underparts and a hooked beak you don't want to mess with. They often have a giveaway faint, pale crescent on their breast. They are easiest to recognise when flying with their short neck, broad 'fingered' wings held in a characteristic V-shape, and short barred tail that looks like a rounded fan. The wings are pale underneath with a black rear edge. The youngsters are paler and streakier than the adults and the female is slightly larger than the male. As well as soaring and gliding on their wide V-shaped wings, they can hover like a Kestrel using slow wing beats. Although you mainly seen them when flying, Buzzards are a bit lazy and spend a lot of time perched on posts or trees, ready to swoop down on any prey that is silly enough to get too close. Their cat like mewing call "meee-ooo" can be heard all year round and especially on sunny days.

For a Buzzard, if it moves and is not too big, they will eat it. They feed on small mammals (like voles), insects, worms, and carrion (dead animals), but their favourite food is a tasty baby rabbit.

Buzzards build their nests in trees or on crags. The nest is made of sticks lined with bracken and moss. A pair of Buzzards will often re-use the same nest over many years. In April or May, 2 to 4 eggs are laid at 2 day intervals and hatch after 35 days. Mum does the bulk of the egg sitting while dad gets the bunny takeaways. The young are fed in the nest by both parents until they can fly 50 days later. They stay dependent on mum and dad for food for a further 40 days until they have got the hang of skinning rabbits.

The Buzzard is mainly resident and found in cultivated country and wooded upland valleys. The young usually keep within a 50km radius of mum and dad so they can pop home at weekends for a good rabbit stew and a chin wag. There are about 50,000 pairs in Britain. The Latin name is 'buteo buteo' which means 'buzzard buzzard'. Science being highly original with its naming again.

Red Kite

The majestic Red Kite was almost driven to extinction by gamekeepers and farmers, but some hung on in Wales from where they have been re-introduced along with birds brought in from Europe. The law has changed, and it is now illegal to kill them. Since the re-introduction, they have been doing well. They are usually seen singly or in pairs.

The Red Kite is rusty red with dark streaks and a pale head. They have a noticeably forked tail, long narrow wings which are usually held flat (unlike a Buzzard's V-shape) and have pale patches at the end before the black wing tips. On their back, there is a faint diagonal pale stripe across the top of the inner wing. The forked tail, though, is the dead giveaway.

The Red Kite's call is more of a whistle compared to a Buzzard's mewing call. It can almost sound like a builder's wolf whistle, a "peeooo-weooo-weooo". The Buzzard, in contrast, calls a single "meeooo" which is repeated after a brief pause.

They hunt by circling high overhead until they spot something tasty to eat. Their eyesight, like all raptors, is phenomenally better than ours! They are top predators and have a varied diet, eating both live and dead prey. Their bill is not strong enough to penetrate tough skin, so they cannot take large prey. When hunting live prey, the Kites will dive feet first from the air, or drop from a post, to catch them. Their diet consists of small mammals (like rats, voles, and mice), medium sized birds (like crows and pigeons), earthworms, frogs, and lots of carrion (already dead animals like road-kill, dead sheep and game birds). Scavenging Red Kites were common in medieval London, even being referenced several times in Shakespeare's plays. For many years, gamekeepers and farmers, seeing Kites eating their animals, mistakenly assumed the Kites had attacked them which is why they killed the Kites.

Red Kite nesting starts in late March. They make a large nest of twigs in the fork of a tall tree within a wood or copse. The male brings the twigs while the female neatly arranges them. The female often decorates the nest with rags, plastic bags, and even underwear pinched from washing lines! Ladies are so much better at homemaking than men. A pair of Red Kites may reuse the same well decorated nest for several years. Both birds incubate the eggs, though the female does more than the male. The 1-3 eggs are laid at 3-day intervals and hatch after 31 days (a long time). The youngsters are fed by both parents and can only fly after 50-70 days. They continue to be fed for another 20 days. With child rearing taking such a long time, they can only raise one brood each year.

The 2,500 pairs of Red Kites in Britain are largely resident, though young birds will wander widely in spring to find their own patch. Their Latin name is 'milvus milvus' which means 'red kite red kite'. Not very original for something so magnificent.

Sparrowhawk

If you find a pile of feathers in the garden, you have probably had a visit from a Sparrowhawk. If you are exceptionally lucky, he may still be on your fence post plucking his victim to bits and having a little dinner.

The Sparrowhawk is one of our smallest birds of prey, the male being about Collared Dove sized. The male is a blueish-grey and has reddish barred underparts that can look orange. He has a grey tail marked with 4 or 5 dark bars. The female is 25% larger than the male and can weigh twice as much – one of the greatest size differences between the sexes in any bird species. She is browner and has dull white underparts with grey bars. She also has a pale stripe over her eye where she has applied her mascara to look fierce. She is not a fatty by being bigger but an Amazonian killing machine.

In flight, the Sparrowhawk has a long slim tail and relatively short broad wings, adaptations for manoeuvring through trees and woodland glades. They fly by doing quick wing beats followed by long glides (flap-flap-glide) unlike a Kestrel (which is bigger and flaps about all over the place). Sparrowhawks are like deadly cruise missiles, flying low over the terrain and looping up over the top of a hedge, inches away from it, and diving down the other side to take their victims by surprise. All you see is a flash of blue-grey wings and the long barred tail. If the hedgerow birds suddenly start making alarm calls, it could be an incoming Sparrowhawk.

They eat mainly small birds like Chaffinch, Yellowhammers, Great Tits and especially (you guessed it) Sparrows. The female will take larger birds such as Blackbirds, Starlings, and Collared Doves. During one year, a Sparrowhawk can munch through over a 1,000 cute little feathered victims. Don't get too upset though as cats, with over 10 million in Britain, kill far more birds than the Sparrowhawk does. Their deadly reputation makes racing Pigeon owners and chicken breeders particularly twitchy, though their claims it was nasty Mr Sparrowhawk that did it have not been backed up by any studies.

The Sparrowhawk nests in woodland where it can hunt along the edges and clearings or make a short trip to your garden. The nest is made of twigs and sticks in the fork of a tree and can measure up to 60cm (2ft) across. The eggs are laid in late April and the incubation of the 4-6 pale blue, brown-spotted eggs is done by mum while dad gets food by going to the supermarket garden feeder. The eggs hatch after 35 days. Both parents then feed the youngsters who stay in the nest for a further 28 days before venturing out to sit on a nearby branch and be teenagers. (Whatever!) The youngsters finally fly a few days later but still depend on mum and dad to feed them for another 20 days while they finish stealth flying school. The Sparrowhawk is silent for most of the year. Dad only making a rapid "kew-kew-kew" call when bringing in a tasty morsel for mum to eat while she sits on the nest.

The Sparrowhawk is now one of the most common birds of prey in Europe. There are more Sparrowhawks than you think there are, as that flash of grey out of the corner of your eye can too often be dismissed as a Pigeon. There are about 80,000 spread all over the country. They are largely resident and don't move far. Some North European birds may move south in winter and reach the eastern shores of Britain. A few decades ago, the use of chemicals in farming nearly wiped out the Sparrowhawk, but banning these chemicals has allowed them to recover. The English folk names for the Sparrowhawk include 'blue hawk', referring to the adult male's colouration, as well as 'hedge hawk' from its cruise missile tactics.

The Latin name is ’accipiter nisus’ with ’accipiter’ meaning 'hawk' and ’nisus’ from the king of Megara. According to Greek mythology, Nisus, the king of Megara, was turned into a Sparrowhawk after his daughter, Scylla, cut off his only purple lock of hair (which made him invincible but look a bit weird) and presented it to her lover (and Nisus' enemy), Minos (a nasty piece of work who fed young girls to his pet Minotaur). Don't you think being turned into a Sparrowhawk to escape is pretty cool?

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