Common Buzzard

Voice

A far-carrying, plaintive mew: peee-yow, drawn out and falling away at the end, usually given while circling high. Heard all year but most persistently from February to May during display. Starlings and jays imitate it surprisingly well.

Identification

Compact, with broad rounded wings, a short broad tail and a head that hardly projects. Soars with wings in a shallow V. Plumage varies enormously, but most birds show dark carpal patches, a pale U-shaped band across the breast, a dark trailing edge to the wing and a dark terminal tail band. Juveniles lack that broad tail band and are streaked, not barred, below.

Confusion species

Honey Buzzard has a smaller head on a longer neck, a longer tail with two narrow basal bars and one broad terminal band, and soars on flat or drooped wings. Rough-legged Buzzard shows a white tail with a black band, a black belly, and hovers regularly. In Spain pale-morph Booted Eagle causes repeated confusion.

Habitat

Half-open farmland with copses, hedgebanks and woodland edges, and any broad motorway verge holding voles. Hunts patiently from low perches, fenceposts and molehills, and will even walk about wet pasture after earthworms. Nests in a tree at the edge of a wood, often in the same spot for years.

Range and movements

Widespread across almost all of Europe. In the Netherlands it is the commonest raptor, present year-round, with northern birds passing through in October and November. In Spain it is resident in the north and in wooded hill country, scarcer in the dry south, where it appears mainly in winter.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

February and March around midday on the first warm days, when pairs perform their undulating sky-dance over the territory. In winter it pays to drive a country lane scanning fenceposts and molehills, especially just after rain when worms come to the surface.

Conservation status

Recovered from persecution and the pesticide era, and now common almost everywhere. Even so, poisoning, illegal shooting and road casualties on fast roads remain substantial, and spring forestry work at nest trees costs broods every year.