The Common Buzzard.

The Buzzard is one of the larger raptors you'd be pretty unlucky not to see on a trip to Northward Hill Reserve, in fact I see them regularly patrolling the skies over my own area in Chattenden,  over Hoo village and even over Rochester town centre. Common, but that hasn't always been the case. Not so many years back you would have to go west to see one.

I went on a Medway RSPB Group walk about ten years ago to Hoth Common and saw my first 'Kent Buzzard' . How things have changed in a decade!

In the 'Birds of the North Kent Marshes' published in 1950, the authors tell us, 'research tells us that the common buzzard still bred in the northern parts of Kent a 150 years ago' They considered it to be 'exterminated as a breeding species'. The short piece concludes, 'There do not seem to be any satisfactory reports of this species in our area during the last forty years.

They can often been seen as you drive in sitting on the telegraph poles eyeing up the bunnies below or from Gordons' Hide looking over to the old Comms Building, sitting in one of the trees or out on the Marshes ona gate post, sometimes two together.

They can be extremely diverse in their plumage varying from a dark mottled brown to light mottled brown, aloft they are pretty unmistakable with a powered flight on stiff, shallow, fast wing beats, soaring on slightly lifted wings often with a clear kink at the elbow.

Here at Northward Hill rabbits form their staple diet, but they will take any small mammal, voles, mice. They will also take fledgling and injured birds, in winter especially they will take carrion.

Last summer I watched one catch a small rabbit and fly round in ever increasing circles with it in its' talons over Bromhey Farm. I'm still not sure what it was up to! Was it hoping to entice a mate with the promise of an easy meal, maybe just displaying proudly its catch, who knows! Eventually it drifted off to the Hill and into the wood, where we do know at least one pair nested and fledged two chicks.

The one thing that is stable about the buzzard is that its' feet and legs are always yellow. Its' distinctive and far reaching mewing call is often the first thing that draws the birders attention to it, especially when it's up in the wild blue yonder, a tiny object wheeling around like a slowly turning windmill.

So a success story for a change, as we always say in conservation, it's not all bad news!

Thanks to Rob Budgen and David Saunders for the images.