One of the buzzards just above me in the garden

There was a lot of aerial commotion around lunchtime today over our back garden. A little earlier I thought I’d seen a sparrowhawk being chased off by several crows at quite high speed. They are not common in our valley, but are often reported as being seen locally.

Later I heard the mewing of buzzards and took my camera out onto the patio. Two adults were circling over the steep hillside which leads down to the Lime Brook about fifty yards away from our garden just beyond our garden. On the hillside there is an abundance of rough ground with scrub, small trees where birds nest, deer roam and foxes scream.

For a few minutes the two buzzards seemed to ignore the crows rancour and right over my head and I could see their eyes clearly. You might just be able to discern them looking down in my picture.

They aren’t often this low in the sky and thus near my camera so I’m taking the liberty of blipping one of the buzzards, for my journal. I do see them around our small valley, called The Horns, most days as I think at least four of them regularly nest here, which I presume are two pairs. I have no idea how to dedifferentiate their sexes. Other buzzards can be seen in the main Golden Valley, into which our little Lime Brook becomes a tributary or affluent of the bigger River Frome. All the river water reaches the even bigger River Severn about eight miles to the west, and flows out to sea down the Bristol Channel, which I can just see in the distant west on a good day, about twenty five miles away.