When I had my old blog, Garden Hopping; now long dead and buried; I would frequently post photographs of the various birds that visited my garden, from the cutest Wren, to Sparrow Hawks  preying on the smaller birds on the feeders. One of my favourite sights and sounds though is the Buzzards.  I don't need to look out of a window to know they are here, I can hear them a long time before I can see them.

This morning was no different, the unmistakable 'mewing' of a Buzzard had me out of my desk chair and in the garden in an instant. I always mean to go equipped with my camera in hand, but the excitement of hearing them makes me forget every single time.  Their sound is ancient and has the power to transport me.

I was glad hadn't wasted time on setting up a camera, because I was rewarded with a ring side seat as the Buzzard began to soar and search out thermals just above the roof of the cottage, it couldn't have been more than 30 foot above my head, and the chickens had beat a hasty retreat into the hedges too.

I love watching their easy grace as they soar effortlessly between the warm spiralling up draughts of air created by the sun's heat on the ground.  Often, Crows, and Jackdaws will mob them as they leave their roosts in the tall pines near the cottage, sometimes in large numbers, perhaps 30 birds mobbing one Buzzard.  Occasionally, this prompts the Buzzards into some amazing acrobatics as they swoop and roll to avoid their tormentors.

Most days we get to see more than one, and today was no exception. Before long my solitary Buzzard was joined by 3 others, all calling to each other filling the sky with their piercing mews. The most we have counted at one time is nine. This was later in the year and I suspect it was the adults I saw today and their juveniles from that years broods.

We often see Red Kites too, but usually over the allotment as they seem to prefer the marshland that falls away from the side of Vicarage Hill into the valley below.  Again you can see these in numbers, but I have never had a camera to hand, and they don't announce themselves like the Buzzards do.

I went back indoors and grabbed my camera, took off my favoured macro lens and put a telephoto on in the vain hope that maybe today I would get a decent shot of them.  I need a much stronger telephoto lens to take great photographs of them, but given the limitations of the equipment I have, these pictures came out all right - at least you can see they are Buzzards - usually I end up with dots in the sky!