Welcome to the Buteo Wildlife blog, a record of some of the wildlife that we have been seeing and occasional identification articles that will hopefully be useful for those trying to learn about wildlife.

If you enjoy reading this blog, join us on one of our tours - days and weekends looking for wildlife. Visit our website for details: www.buteowildlife.co.uk
Note that tours with clients may not always feature prominently on this blog because we are unlikely to have time for photography when out with clients - and walls of text don't tend to make the most interesting posts. If there is time for a few snatched photos they may not always be of the highest quality - but we'll use them anyway!


To try and keep posts in chronological order they may sometimes be given earlier dates/times than when they are actually posted. Apologies, for this - it's not meant to mislead anyone (and we will try to avoid this happening too often).

21 January 2013

Lee Valley Country Park (17th January 2013).

I just had time for a couple of hours birding and, as the Pager had told me that there were three Bewick's Swans on Seventy-acres Lake I went to see if I could find them. Unfortunately they had moved on so I walked up to see if they had moved to Holyfield Lake.

As I started walking past the first field beyond the overflow car park a stunning male Sparrowhawk flew low across in front of me. Further along the road towards the Sailing Club I saw a photographer obviously trying to get shots of something over towards Holyfield Hall Farm. I caught up with him and he pointed out what I took to be a Common Buzzard flying above the hill. From that angle it was in silhouette and I thought it had gone down behind the hill but we then found it perched in a small tree. I got the 'scope onto it and immediately saw the dark shield on the lower breast and belly and the pale inner undertail with a broad, black sub-terminal bar which identified it as an adult Rough-legged Buzzard. The bird then took off and floated across the field, gradually gaining height and continued flying south.

I continued to the Grand Weir hide and scanned the lake but there was no sign of the Bewick's Swans but a drake and two redhead Goosander were swimming in one of the unfrozen patches of water. On the way back to the car a Red Fox saw me just as I saw it and we stayed looking at each other at a couple of hundred metres before it turned and trotted away up the field.

No comments:

Post a Comment