Leave Me Alone

I was out early, in the local countryside on a frosty morning.  I bumped into someone opening the local golf range.  We got chatting and I remarked that his CCTV would have probably picked up a buzzard that had been sitting on the gates to the car park when I pulled up.  I was surprised when in return he told me that he often came upon buzzards resting under the adjacent hedge first thing.  It really didn't seem like typical buzzard behaviour.

Well you can imagine that I was even more surprised when I came across this buzzard after walking 20 metres up the local lane.  I'd obviously surprised it, and it had moved into deeper cover, only to find itself prevented from going any further by the wire fence you can see in the background of the picture.  

While I'd intended to take landscape images, I'd also taken the Olympus and 300mm lens in case I saw deer.  I quickly took a few images, through the melee of branches in the hedge.  I won't win any wildlife photography prizes but if you look large, you may just be able to see its eyelashes.  I'd already realised my presence was alarming the bird, so moved off, planning to check it had extricated itself from the hedge when I came back.

The local pool was frozen over and I did get some reasonable landscape images, but the highlight for me was getting up close and personal with this buzzard and I wanted to record it here for future reference.  On my return it had gone, but I did came across another? buzzard on the ground adjacent to my car as I walked back to it.  This time it had a clear take off route and soon flew away.