A cautionary tale of birding

 

I was out birding today ,looking for migrants while waiting for a rain  front to move through and had seen little from the car while watching a nice copse edge with ditch, stream and watermeadow.

 I decided to drive inland and was crossing open farmland near a large wood when I noticed a large raptor in the sky. I assumed Marsh Harrier on size but it didnt quite look right so I looked again. Buzzard sprang to mind but the tail seemed wrong so I pulled over and put the bins on the bird through the window. It was a large pot- bellied,heavily built but  fairly short tailed raptor, uniform greyish brown above with obvious white undertail coverts that curved over onto it's rump.

 It then began to swoop up and down in the sky and dropped to within 50 feet of the ground, banked across in front of me and powered away over nearby trees.

The moral of the tale is- take a second look, I haven't seen a Goshawk that well in years :)

S

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  • Great advice, I have often nearly missed a great sight presuming it was something else

    Of all creatures, man is the most detestable, he is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
    ~ Mark Twain