Reasons to linger longer in bed...

A strong wind blowing from the West on a miserable, damp, grey morning...
the bedroom is nice and warm...
the bed even cosier...
we have a cup each of Taylor's on the bedside tables...
and each a pair of binoculars...

And we are watching the birds...
Our view is a little restricted...
but we can see the ridge opposite.

From left... Long wave radio for the cricket [unplugged], bird book, binos, cat brushes and McDougalls Flour Men

First some pigeons having a "fly around"....
back and forth...
always a straggler...

The odd pair of crows...
making their way westward against the wind...
then a flock of small birds rapidly westward across our view!

Too fast to identify properly, but all the "jizz"...
the way they are flying, the way they behave....
shouts...
starlings...
busy aiming toward feeding grounds....
that they probably hadn't finished working yesterday...
before heading home to roost...

Then something larger glides slowly into vision...
just a buzzard!
Three seem to be around again...
nice to see them back after about a month's absence.

Buze Variable

It is hunting the ridge opposite...
using the wind to hold it steady whilst it watches the ground...
hunting...
hunting...
the primary feathers are completely spread...
like fingers at the end of the wing...
they twitch and flicker...
the wings jiggle...
the tail twists one way...
then the other...
controlling its position minutely...
it must be rising and falling as it makes its way against the wind...
but it is imperceptible...
it looks like it is travelling on rails...
all the time the head is moving left and right..
scanning the ground...

Common Buzzard

It sees something and begins to hover...
like a kestrel...
not as smoothly...
but enough to hold station...
eyes fixed on the ground below...
the wings close into the body as it stoops...
but then, almost as quickly they flick back out...
and the buzzard rises on the wind...
allowing itself to be carried up...
and back to where it began the stoop...
it had lost sight of the prey.

Three times we watched it pass the windows westward...
working the ridge...

The ridge up by La Jarrie

A sudden burst of activity nearer to us...
a cloud of LBJs lifts into the sky from our riverbank...
then two crows, chasing a raptor, come flying past...
making the deep cronking call we've noticed...
when watching them harry predators...
From what little we saw of the raptor...
it was probably the female sparrowhawk...
she's a regular along the riverbank and past the house.


Reasons enough I think to stay a little longer in bed...
on a Sunday!!

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[LBJs... Little Brown Jobs... usually used to group the mixed flocks of winter buntings, finches and tits... often seen in silhouette against a grey sky... but often 'hiding' interesting species.]

Osprey eats Raptor...

Looking out of the bedroom window this morning I spotted the Buzzard [Buteo buteo] Buse variable I call "Osprey" busily eating something near to the field seed feeder...

Busy feeding... the white line is feathers!

I went into the guest room to try and get a picture that wasn't through the willow...

But these were the best I could get [at 800ASA in the poor light]... here it is pulling hard at some flesh.

First thoughts were that it had got a pheasant...
but we could see all ten of the Dopey Dorises...
had it taken the Jeremy?

Seven of Ten... the Dopey Dorises under the feeder...

I thought not... the trail of plucked feathers were too white... and then I saw the Jeremy in the field the other side of the Aigronne, parleying with some crows.
were there eleven females around then?

These two shots show why I call it Osprey ...

...the position of the white on the breast and head, front and, here, back... coupled with the colour of the wings...
make it look very much like an Osprey [Pandion haliaetus] Balbuzard pêcheur when it is upright on a post...
 especially by the étang!!

I wasn't going to investigate quite at that moment.... the rain was drifting in sheets across the meadow, in the strong winds!
The buzzard wasn't at all worried by a little rain... it just kept on feeding.
It was there for around an hour... eating all the time.
It then stood there... open beak and hanging wings... panting... trying to cool off...
[all birds do this after a very large meal... their metabolism is such that they heat up very rapidly after a good feast]
... before flying up into a carefully "fallen" tree...
where it rested a while before flying off.


When there was a break in the rain, I put my boots on and went to inspect the kill...

As you can see from the last of the above pictures, it was no pheasant...
not with feet like that!

It was a Barn Owl [Tyto alba] Effraie des clochers... possibly the one that was using our "donkey shed" this summer... who knows?
There was certainly nothing that could be described as identifiable remains of that one...
it was quite a dark morph... but you'd need more than was left here to see that...
the buzzard had eaten all but a few feathers, the pelvis and the feet!

It had also left the next pellet / stomach contents...

I found this when I moved some feathers... so I'm pretty sure that it doesn't belong to the Buzzard.

...that will give me a clue as to what the owl was finding...
not much probably, there are beetle wing cases in the pellet...
the whole valley is thoroughly water-logged...
it's no place for voles!!

There has been standing water since Christmas in all the grazing meadows...
the places that the owl is most likely to hunt...
and in the ploughed [and in some cases, planted] fields that are also in the flood plain...
there are vast open areas on "the tops"...
but even there, you can see the standing water!

This is a hard time for the night raptors that have a major diet of voles...
it is probably bad for the Little Owl [Athena noctua] Chêveche d'Athéna that lives up by Bezuard...
there will be few insects available...
it will be having a "diet of wurms".

If as I suspect, there has been a crash in the vole population....
it is the top predators, in this case raptors, that suffer first.

Our cat has only managed a couple of voles since Christmas...
and just before the last snow, the local Kestrel took a bird as prey off our front door.
So their pickings are meagre...
Baron has his tinned food and the Kestrel has switched to birds.
You should see them scatter when it is about... normally they ignore it!

The Barn Owls are unlikely to try that...

The Tawny Owl [Strix aluco] Chouette hulotte is probably OK up there in the woods...
there will be field mice around...
and possibly Bank Voles...
and probably an "invasion" of water displaced refugees...
so it is sitting pretty!

The Barn Owl can probably hunt on the fringes of the woods...
but it would not be instinctive...
so it is most probable that the poor Barn Owl here was either an older bird...
or one of this years young [the dried feathers will give me some idea]...
but, either way it would be starving and may have succumbed in the last snowfall.

The Buzzard is a well known scavenger and saw its chance of a good meal in hard times.

We can feed the small passerines, and some of the more adaptable insectivores...
the Robin was using the fat balls last year in the freeze...
but there is no way of feeding the raptors...
other than making sure there is a supply of passerines for those that will take them.

So, sad though it is, we will probably see fewer Barn Owls around next year...
they start breeding early in the year and, unless vole numbers increase rapidly...
they won't be able to feed two or three owlets...
so it will take a few years for a good population to build.

Apologies if you found this upsetting... believe me, I did when I discovered that it was a Barn Owl... 

but that's life... and our valley will find more Barn Owls coming by! In fact I have a very large nest box to put up... a Barn Owl box... it will be going in the trees by the Aigronne.

On a lighter note the "smell chequer" didn't recognise passerines... 
it wanted me to put pessaries!