Our beautiful Common Buzzard perched on granite rocks in Dartmoor, the soft morning light giving a lovely hue
The common buzzard breeds in woodlands, usually on the fringes, but favours hunting over open land. It eats mainly small mammals, and will come to carrion. A great opportunist, it adapts well to a varied diet of pheasant, rabbit, other small mammals to medium mammals, snakes and lizards, and can often be seen walking over recently ploughed fields looking for worms and insects. Buzzards do not normally form flocks, but several may be seen together on migration or in good habitat. The Victorian writer on Dartmoor, William Crossing, noted he had on occasions seen flocks of 15 or more at some places.[citation needed] Though a rare occurrence, as many as 20 buzzards can be spotted in one field area, approximately 30 metres (98 ft) apart, so cannot be classed as a flock in the general sense, consisting of birds without a mate or territory. They are fiercely territorial, and, though rare, fights do break out if one strays onto another pair's territory, but dominant displays of aggression will normally see off the interloper. Pairs mate for life. To attract a mate (or impress his existing mate) the male performs a ritual aerial display before the beginning of spring. This spectacular display is known as 'the roller coaster'. He will rise high up in the sky, to turn and plummet downward, in a spiral, twisting and turning as he comes down. He then rises immediately upward to repeat the exercise. The call is a plaintive peea-ay, similar to a cat's meow. The common buzzard (Buteo buteo) is a medium-to-large bird of prey whose range covers most of Europe and extends into Asia. Over much of its range, it is resident year-round, but birds from the colder parts of the northern hemisphere typically migrate south (some well into the southern hemisphere) for the northern winter
Size: 3276px × 2438px
Location: Dartmoor National Park UK
Photo credit: © Sheree Sedgbeer / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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