Suburban Raptors - The Longford Buzzards and other Stories

The first time I saw the Longford Buzzards was a couple or three years ago now. There's a particular oak tree gracing an ancient meadow that abuts the M6 (to the South) where I spotted a large bird perching atop a dead branch. When it flew off, as I have found they always will whenever you get within 100 yards of them, I saw it was a buzzard.

I've seen that solitary bird many times since perching in the same place at various times through the year though there are long periods when it is absent, or seems so. I once saw a pair soaring high above the same area above the motorway and over the nearby Coventry Canal but never ever saw a pair in that meadow. I'd guessed the bird I'd seen there was a loner. It never occurred to me to go find its feathers but this year I took a look and found a couple of tails feathers - one centre feather under the tree and one outside feather under another large oak 50 yards away. They were from the same bird. A perfect match...

I then met the landowner who wanted to know why I was trawling about on his land. I explained and offered him one of the tail feathers and he then gave me permission to trawl at will seeing as he was interested in the bird himself, had a theory that it nested in the trees by the M6, and was chuffed to now have a feather from it. I made a mistake by giving him the centre feather, which in a lapse of judgement I'd failed to photograph with its sister, as it struck me then that I'd hit upon a theory - that buzzards can be fingerprinted and traced by the tail feathers which do seem unique in pattern bird by bird unlike the wing feathers which seem standard in pattern to all buzzards.

I've returned a number of times to those oaks and found one of the minor coverts among many flank and breast feathers and the remains of a number meals directly beneath them both including two black and red/brown wing feathers from I can only guess was a domestic fowl of some sort, a long thin dark brown primary that I cannot easily pin down but looks just like a overgrown swift (if it is a swift then it's from an alpine swift which is a proper rarity in England) a skeletal song thrush identified by its feathers, an immature kestrel who's various feathers were scattered about in the ditch but no bodily remains were seen and the centre lining of a nest of some species or another presumably plucked out of a bush complete with eggs, or even along with the chick...who knows?


A young kestrel's feathers and the lining of a nest in the ditch below the perch

I'd guess the bird took it off to another safe site to finish the yougster off when a dog walker passed by - these suburban buzzards might be venturing ever closer to city life but they are still extremely cagey when it comes to close proximity to visible humans. I've tried for a photo of the bird on its perch many times but only ever have caught empty air above that stark grey stick as they bird spooks and swoops down and away to the safety of the dense dark birch wood along the motorway embankment...


The kestrel chick's underdeveloped primary hung up on twig - I'd suppose this is evidence that the bird was eaten above the ground?

Talking about kestrels I should mention that the very next day Judy plucked a mature kestrel's right wing primary out of the long grass in the very next meadow, a meadow that runs along the cut and the next morning while walking Molly in that same place I saw the bird itself flushed off its canal side perch by the dog . It looked to be minus too many tail feathers for its own good though I haven't found one yet. I have found another matching left primary since, from a field a quarter of a mile distant and right by the M6, but don't think it is from the same bird as the two are different in colour saturation unless one is older and the other fresher? Possibly they are both from a mating pair who ply their trade on the motorway embankments?


Two primaries from the local kestrels and the secondary of one from Harvington

In the same field I have also come across numerous uncleared platters including a blackbird (a set of tail feathers only) and a domestic chicken evidenced by a puff of yellow breast feathers and two feral pigeons. These meals are always taken at the side of the field but I cannot say for sure whether or not they are the meals of an identifiable species though the picture below is likely to be that of a buzzard if it's not that of a fox (no buzzard feathers found nearby) as it's a feral pigeon found one week in the field corner right by the M6 and the leg of a rabbit overlain on the same spot the next...


Feral pigeon and rabbit meals by the motorway - obviously this is its usual table at the restaurant!

I then located another perch in a big old oak (what else!) in the middle of another set of horse meadows near to Wiken Slough. I suspected there would another favoured perch in the vicinity somewhere and went looking under every sizeable oak I could find around the Slough but without luck until I spotted what I thought might just be a feather fluttering in the distance beneath an oak in a fenced off horse field. I hopped over the gate and went to investigate.



I was a buzzard secondary and a second smaller secondary lay nearby....

There was also a trampled minor primary and lots of breast and flank feathers beneath that oak and out in the field a way, but no evidence whatsoever of meals, and then caught sight of the bird as it soared above the motorway a quarter of a mile away.

I tried for a photo but got only a speck in the sky on full zoom...



This is a site just a half a mile from the first and another perch near to the motorway which runs a couple of hundred yards to the North. I'm wondering if this (or these?) buzzard has taken to the motorway as its source of fresh carrion? It would make sense as every sighting and find has come from within spitting distance of it.

As for raptors apart from those mentioned I've also seen - though glimpses of a streak of blue-grey passing right by my head shooting through the dense towpath bushes at full velocity and crossing the canal only to vanish is more properly described as 'experienced' - one or perhaps two individual sparrowhawks. The first was carrying a blackbird in its talons! I have never found a feather though...

... but I live in hope!

Then there was the passing bird I witnessed soaring eastward on the wind a good half mile above my head as I sat in the front garden sunning myself. This was no buzzard but it was so far up I couldn't say what else it could have been. Flying in regular circles it faced the wind and stopped and then soared quickly a good two or three hundred yards or more along the wind before turning and repeating the cycle. It passed by and out of sight in no time but never flapped a wing...

Now that's travelling!

Rural Raptors - Buzzard Heaven & other Discoveries

Out on a late evening foray with Judy and Molly around the conifer plantations of Corley Moor for cock pheasant primaries last night. Short on an order I had to find at least twenty (and more to keep the listing running sweetly) to make up the deficit but in country full of cocks all I could get were hen. Last time I was here a month ago I bagged up but last night I found a measly three cock primaries to probably a hundred hen - the cock moult is obviously well and truly over. I hope the client will accept hen - the listing didn't specify either hen or cock just 'pheasant' but they are different enough for a problem to arise...


Birmingham in the distance taken from the high ground at Corley Moor

 It was a roaring success in other ways though. First item of real interest was a wet and bedraggled small 'buzzard' that I bagged for later. Later, when it had dried out sufficiently and I'd teased it back to shape it turned out to be a tawny owl secondary - the fourth specimen I've found this year of the species and the first secondary, so that was pleasing. Last time out in this neck of the woods I turned up a glorious fresh primary. Owl feathers are such gorgeous things...

Tawny owl primary and secondary wing feathers


Tawny owl close up showing the unmistakable velvet texture of an owl feather

The next surprise was the sight of three guinea fowl escapees running hard for cover as Molly disturbs them, birds who've taken up residence in the six inch stubble of a newly harvested field of oilseed rape  - the evidence of which soon came in the form of three of their polka dot flank feathers found underneath a great old oak by the side of the field. None were found anywhere else in the locality that evening so they are a small population indeed.


Guinea fowl body feathers


Then we got hopelessly misrouted and found ourselves in the wrong place only getting back on track an hour later when we'd negotiated some difficult field margins looking for a way out and got ourselves yards from the desired place but separated from it by dense hedges and no gateways, stiles or convenient gaps to pass through. On the way we found loads of the ubiquitous wood pigeon, the more strongly barred tails of which are popular with buyers so I always need them and a single jay primary - they are not exactly common round the Coventry area are these secretive birds. I eventually located a disused gate hidden by high weeds and we pushed through, crossed a field of curious bullocks, crossed a stream and got back on track.

We were now at the find spot of that wonderful owl primary I told you about. There weren't any more on this occasion but a known find spot of any raptor or owl is always worth a second or third careful  look around as they all have their regular perches. We turned through into the next field and stumbled onto a pair of fresh buzzard feathers sitting next to each other at the edge of the field (where else?) and what a pair they were. Both pristine and barb perfect. One was a tail, and from a different bird than the tail I found last time here just thirty yards away. The other was that hard to find buzzard and a first for me, the 'finger' primary, one of those distinctive eagle type feathers that stick out like outspread digits on the end of the wing and that the bird uses to control its high soaring flight in the rising thermal air currents.


The evening's total haul of buzzard

Now the light was fading fast and our progress had to be back to the car or end up in the woods in the dark without a headlamp - not a problem for me but Judy would not have liked it overmuch. The walk was uphill and tight along the fringe of a large area of woodland on top of a ridge and passing through four large fields en route. Molly was beside herself with boundless excitement because the whole walk had been punctuated by flushed birds and now in the dusk any movement in the woods had to be investigated by her inbred spaniel curiosity. What surprised me was the quantity of fresh buzzard feathers we found...

A poult had been newly killed and eaten, or died and eaten if you'd prefer. Obviously the work of a buzzard as the entire breast meat and guts had been carefully removed leaving an empty rib cage with intact tail and wings but no head. Nearby I located another buzzard primary. A hundred yards further along was another smaller primary, and a quarter of a mile farther still, a third. Then a primary covert and another tail but one that did not match either of the previously found tails so a third bird in the territory is likely.


The four different tails from four separate individuals. I think the two at left are female, the two at right, male as they are slightly smaller.



And all the wing feathers found in two forays. Just one secondary and none of the minor secondaries or any tertiaries as yet.


Then we finally made our way into the lane where I came across another surprise.  Two groups of massive boletus mushrooms sprouting out the side of the bank. I thought they were lurid boletes at the time but couldn't be sure so took one home for investigation. They were bitter boletes, a blue staining fungi that re-whitens some time after cutting. As with virtually all boletes it is perfectly edible but tastes ghastly. Then, I looked up from the last group of mushrooms and sitting there was another buzzard tail, and from yet another bird, so four at least living cheek by jowl in this carrion rich environment.

PS, the client was fine about 'the problem' so no tears, or refunds!

Suburban Songbirds - Meadow Pipit Tail from Hawkesbury

To launch this new blog I've chosen the smallest identifiable feather I've yet come across since I started this mad habit of looking for, identifying, collecting and selling feathers. I found this specimen this in the same way as I usually do: scanning the ground for fresh moult feathers whilst out and about on the twice daily walks around the local area with Molly our English Springer Spaniel.

This diminutive tail feather (just 55 mm long) was located along a path that runs through some scrubby woodland by the M6 before opening out into fresh air and running a further couple of hundred yards alongside a meadow filled with many small hawthorns and the like and used occasionally as a horse paddock. It was just a little way inside the cover of the woods...

 

The feather is one of the more distinctive of the song bird feathers with its slim profile and light ochre coloured tip and in this country it really can't be confused with much else. It is the feather second or third from last on the left of the tail depending upon maturity - the adult outside feather having a much larger diagonal area of light ochre extending from the tip to half way up. All the middle tail feathers are just a plain very dark slate grey - if I'd found one of those then I would have been none the wiser as many small birds have such indistinctive tail feathers and it could have been taken for a number of them - but of course now, any feathers of the same size and the same dark grey found round these parts will be more easily attributed to this particular pipit.

 Meadow pipits are not that common in Warwickshire and I've certainly never seen one, nevertheless this is proof positive that they live around the local area. I'll keep an eye out for them in the next few weeks. Interestingly the same meadow has a large old oak slap in the middle of it and this tree is used by one of the the local buzzards as a perch. I have never seen the bird in the meadow but a few of her feathers are usually there below the oak as evidence of her presence. These are mostly breast and flank but I have found three secondaries in the last few weeks, one of which had been there some time and had been trodden into the mud by the horses.