Wednesday 1 February 2012

Buzzards in Pyjamas


I've been trying to film a buzzard on roadkill for a while now, as part of a short documentary about Buzzards and their changing behaviour.
 But there is a problem, Buzzards feed only in the early morning and at Dusk. Landing, eating as much as they can as fast as they can, then leaving before the scavengers/traffic arrives. So this gives you a very brief window of opportunity between the Buzzard starting to feed and the 20 minutes or so until the local magpies turn up.
So far all attempts have been failiures. But last saturday my luck changed when I was woken by a yell from my dad "OLI WAKE UP RIGHT NOW! IF YOU'R IN THE CAR IN 1 MINUTE THERE'S A BUZZARD 500M DOWN THE LANE!!!". Head still ringing I leapt into the corridor, grabbed my camera bag from the bannister and dived headlong into the car.
When we got there the sun was just coming up, and there in front of us was a happily feeding Buzzard; seemingly oblivious to our presence. I had around 5 minutes of filming time, in which the Buzzard allowed me to get within 10m, before the first car of the day turned up and it flew up over the hedge.
Hopefully there'll be some more Buzzard shots on the way as February is the Displaying season, when you can often see 4 or more Buzzards soaring on the high thermals mewing to each other.

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