Common Buzzard
Buteo buteo
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The plaintive mewing overhead — now the commonest bird of prey in Britain, and back from near-extinction here.
A broad-winged, round-tailed raptor, variable in colour from very dark brown to strikingly pale, usually with a pale breast band. Buzzards are now common right across Dumfries and Galloway — soaring over farmland, perched on fence posts and telegraph poles, and often mobbed by crows. Persecution and pesticides had reduced them to the west of Britain by the 1960s; they have since recolonised the whole country.
Behaviour
Buzzards spend a lot of time perched, watching for small mammals, and will walk about in fields taking earthworms, especially after ploughing — behaviour that surprises people expecting a pure hunter. They soar on broad wings held in a shallow V, calling a drawn-out mewing 'peee-yow'. In late winter pairs perform a rollercoaster display flight of steep dives and climbs over the nesting wood.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Hawks, kites and eagles (Accipitridae)
- Size
- 51–57 cm · wingspan up to 1.2 m
- UK status
- Green-listed
Photo by caroline legg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons