The message
from "Brian" --- 'flayb' to respond contains these words:


"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Brian" --- 'flayb' to respond contains these
words:


"Tom Atkinson" wrote in message
...
Last evening I was sitting in the garden
admiring my wife's handiwork when our cat growled. I heard what seemed
to
be
cats mewing. I looked up and
saw two buzzards soaring and crying to each other. Superb.
Tom Atkinson
~~~~~~
We have too~~ They will not remain much longer, however, as they've
totally finished the local songbirds. Even the Wrens were pulled out of
the
hedge/bank.

That sounds more like sparrowhawks. Buzzards are too unwieldy in
flight to catch small birds on the wing or hopping about in hedges
(unlike sparrowhawks who can manouevre at high speed even in copses).
We've always had a lot of buzzards around and they make no noticable
impact on smaller bird numbers at all. IME they mostly catch small
mammals, more or less by crashlanding on them :-)

Janet~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Definitely buzzards. They've nested in the same scots pine for more than
twenty years. One chick was kicked out some years ago which I reared and
flew for three years.
Trouble only started when we stocked the dovecote with 40 white
fantails. These were quickly taken by actually entering the cote and in one
instance taken from my hand when trying to rescue the injured bird!! [plus a
scratch and bite]. The buzzards soon 'evolved?' to realise that birds
were their easist prey. I've seen them searching within the hedges for nests
with young~~ lately the last of the hiding wrens!!.

Interesting. I also used to keep white doves, until the sparrowhawks
(and mink) killed them all. I've seen sparrowhawks take the doves from
their perch on our roof ridge. We also had buzzards nesting within
sight, but they never touched the doves. (OTOH, they did have an
enormous population of voles rabbits and roadkill to feed on). Here on
Arran, the buzzards are distinctly unafraid of people and much more
common in our neighbourhood that sparrowhawks.. We quite often have
buzzards perched boldly close to the house, or on roadside fence stobs,
and on one occasion had to pull up the car in the road while one of them
declined to get off the squashed animal it was eating in the middle of
the road. How he didn't get hit I can't imagine!

Janet