Most welcome buzzard

Palustris's pic looks like a Kestrel to me as it has a dark band across the base of the tail, a slight trace of a moustache, narrower wings, and a blunter head than a Buzzard, but I could be wrong.

 

In which case it was the biggest kestrel I have ever seen. Hard to get scale on a quick snapshot like that, but it was the size (or slightly smaller) of the usual buzzards we get aplenty of round us.

 

Well the ones I saw a few miles away were not kestrels - too big, but not buzzard colour. Anyone know anyone who knows what juvenile buzzards look like, from underneath.
I have been scouring the net cause this ID is doing my head in.

 

Just putting a silly one in here ... wouldn't we ONLY know what they look like from underneath! :D :D :D And THAT could be worrying if they got their claws into us!!!! :eek:

Maybe someone has gone hang gliding or the like for a bit of buzzard / kestrel spotting? :rolleyes:

Of course, one could pop down to the local wild bird sanctuary for a quick peek!

 

That's the one thing I couldn't judge, the size, oh well back to drawing board.
LoL, there are places on Crete where you can look DOWN on Griffon Vultures and you certainly wouldn't want them to get their claws into you! :D

 

:eek: :eek:

Seriously, we had a wild bird sanctuary just near us on the IoW and there's one in Lagos here.

 

Yes - the size is crucial and impossible to gauge from a photo. Colouring of buzzards is variable according to age, sex and time of year.

The only certainty is the fingered feathers on the wings. Kestels don't have them and neither do the falcons. Could be a female hen harrier? None of my books give a picture exactly like Palustris's bird. Perhaps its a Buteo palustris

 

According to a couple who used to run a nursery near hear there are hen harriers on Whixall Heath which is not that far away from us, but we have never seen anything like them here.

 

I'm with Strongy on this - without Palustris' benefit of knowing size - but it's largely because of the roundels, or lack of...

 

Well it would be lovely if these were hen harriers. In one of my books it says "female is dark brown above, pale yellow brown beneath."
I also thought the images on the net looked more like your picture than a buzzard with regard to the head.
Palustris have you a link to where you are loading up the pictures so we can see the head in more detail?
And another book describes the call as "hek, hek, hek" which is similar to what I heard. There was no mewing and I have always heard mewing when I have seen buzzards together. The same book says that the young resemble the female except more rufous.

[ 23. November 2006, 12:14 AM: Message edited by: geoffhandley ]

 

Found this when I was looking at the rest of the pictures. I have had to do a lot of work on it to get a reasonable clear shot of the head. This help any? It is sat on a telepgraph pole so scale is easier to work out.

 

Well the pole gives an idea of scale so it looks a bit small for a buzzard. I'm still going for a young female hen harrier.

 

Still not so sure about that, the Hen harrier pictures show it with a longer tail than this one has in the first picture.

 

Yes it could be a kestrel. The more I look at the photo of it on the pole, the more like a kestrel it seems. Geoff's bird looks bigger and more buzzard like

 

Well, as I said, it is the biggest by a long way Kestel we have ever seen. We do not generally see them here at all, though they are on the A5 not far away, say 3 miles? It flew more like a buzzard than anything else and apart from the colour (which we only saw after the picture was downloaded) we 'dismissed' it as a juvenile buzzard. To me the wings are just too broad for a hovering hawk. much more the size and spread of a power hawk, like a buzzard. I think this bird may well be the one that gets away. With any luck it will return and pose for a proper portrait, but don't hold your breath!