Buzzards were uncommon here when I first became a Country Diarist, 35 years ago. To watch them then I would need to cross the North Pennines into Cumbria. Now there are few days when I don’t hear their mewing calls in the Durham dales, almost always soaring high above, ever on the lookout for carrion.
Once, on a memorably hot summer afternoon, I watched eight soaring in languid, effortless circles on rising thermals, with hardly a single wing stroke, stacked one above the other like airliners orbiting in a holding pattern. Sometimes, encounters have been more dramatic. This spring I watched as one turned on its back and displayed its talons to another flying alongside. A courting pair, or rival males? I don’t know; the sexes are indistinguishable at that distance.
Most often, they are targets of harassment by other birds. In early April I saw a screeching heron attack one that passed too close to its treetop nest, but crows are the commonest aggressors. There is something very satisfying about the way a buzzard easily dodges and out-turns its tormentors, unflappable unless they become too persistent. Then it wearily drops a wing, turns tail and glides away in a serene, shallow dive, a mile in a minute, while the hapless crows wonder where it went. But, in all these years, buzzards have always been distant apparitions; I’ve never been close to one, until today.
Sunlight streamed between gaps in the foliage of riverbank trees. Through one, I caught sight of scaly yellow legs and talons gripping a branch, just above head height, about 10 metres away. The breeze shifted the branches, revealing beautifully patterned chest feathers, a yellow and black hooked bill and the raptor’s ferocious gaze. Neither of us blinked, for perhaps 20 seconds. Finally, it stretched its wings, turned, released its grip and allowed itself be carried away on its element, the air; disdainfully, as if I had been another tiresome crow.
I doubt I’ll ever be this close to a wild, live buzzard again. Later, I wondered, did it really happen? Undoubtedly, I had taken a photograph. But that was unnecessary: moments like this are once-in-a-lifetime gifts, indelibly etched in the memory.
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