Buzzard Blitzkrieg

At around eight this morning, the birds suddenly took off. The sky was wheeling and whirring with wings belonging to starlings, pigeons, crows and even parakeets. Then, once they had all buried themselves in the branches, I saw it, majestically wheeling high above the garden and over the fields that border Charville Lane.

Buzzards prefer eating carrion. They don't go into a stoop and plummet from the sky, or make an air strike into the garden from a high tree. They soar and spy. The garden birds have far more to fear from the sparrowhawk, but the fear of a large shadow looming above them is enough to send them into a flap. They must have the ability to differentiate between the shape and, perhaps, the aerial gait, of one large bird and another, for they don't fly for cover when the heron glides over. Instead, the larger birds such as crows, mob it and try to drive the poor, innocent fish eater away.