Joggers have been much maligned over the last couple of months, sparking anger for failing to maintain social-distancing as they run past people in parks and on the streets. And now it seems birds of prey are getting in on the action with reports from Nailsea in Somerset that a buzzard has started attacking joggers, forcing some to change their exercise route.
This is not the first time the press has reported on buzzards taking exception to joggers, walkers, and even cyclists as they go about their daily business. Buzzard attacks are very rare and unlikely to cause serious injury but during breeding season females can become aggressive towards anything and anyone they perceive as a threat to their nest and young.
The buzzard is the UK’s most widespread bird of prey with anything between 57,000 and 79,000 breeding pairs that can be found in every county in England, Scotland, and Wales.
It is a heavily built bird with a broad tail and wings that it holds pushed forward and slightly raised in a shallow V-shape as it flies. It has highly variable plumage that ranges from light to dark brown. In the UK it typically has dark brown upperparts with lighter underparts and a white bar across its lower chest. It can be mistaken for a golden eagle but is much smaller and has a distinctive fanned tail.
Buzzards have a reputation as lazy birds, so much so that falconers don’t tend to use them for hunting live quarry. Indeed, their name comes from an Old French word buisart which means “inferior hawk” and buzzard used to be a slang term for a foolish or ignorant person. However, due to their size and temperament buzzards are often recommended for first-time falconers or for those who simply want to enjoy flying birds of prey.
A captive bird certainly prefers to return to a falconer’s fist to feed rather than chase prey, but in the wild, it can be fairly active as it hunts searching for small mammals and rodents, in particular voles, mice, shrews, and rabbits. They will also take birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and sometimes feed on carrion. It rarely catches prey on the move preferring instead to perch motionless for long periods on high exposed poles and trees intensely scanning the terrain below. Once it locates prey it will slowly fly directly to it before seizing it on the ground.
Buzzards will also eat worms, caterpillars and other invertebrates to supplement their diet. Large flocks of buzzards can often be seen on recently ploughed fields running around or performing a rain dance to entice worms up from the soil, giving rise to their colloquial name ‘Dancing Hawk’.
Buzzards have been persecuted in the UK for centuries. In 1539 Henry VIII passed an Act of Parliament making it a felony to steal eggs and chicks from the nests of hawks but specifically excluded buzzards from the list of protected birds.
He also made it illegal to kill coneys (rabbits) so we assume this wasn’t done out of his concern for wildlife but rather because he wanted to stop peasants and buzzards from ruining his mornings hunting. James I of Scotland went one step further and decreed buzzards were vermin, ordering the destruction of them all.
Yet despite this and due to the buzzard’s remarkable ability to adapt and survive they remained a common sight across the UK until the beginning of the 19th century.
But as gamebird shooting for sport became more fashionable and widespread so the persecution of raptors increased. Much of the killing occurred during the breeding season and several species including the white-tailed eagle, the osprey, the European honey buzzard, the goshawk, and the marsh harrier were driven to extinction from Britain altogether.
Farmers also killed buzzards in the mistaken belief that they took lambs and sheep, perhaps in part influenced by the habit of buzzards to feed on carrion. Although buzzards will sometimes eat dead or stillborn lambs, live animals are too big for them to hunt as prey, although this is a myth that persists to this day.
One may wonder how a relatively small number of humans were able to eradicate species in such a short period of time. But for extinction to occur it is not necessary to kill every individual; they simply had to kill more birds each year than could be replaced. With young birds and nests at particular risk of persecution, many buzzards never even made it to sexual maturity.
By the middle of the 19th century buzzards only remained in the north and west of the UK and by the end of the century were only found in a few areas in the western parts of Britain and became extinct in Ireland.
At the beginning of the 20th century, public attitudes started to change and bounty schemes were abolished. During the two World Wars, illegal killing reduced significantly and the population of buzzards started to recover.
However, in the 1950s disaster struck once more with the introduction of myxomatosis to the UK. Myxomatosis is a disease caused by a pox virus that is severe, and usually fatal in European rabbits. It had been used as a biological control agent in Australia to try and curb the feral rabbit population whose numbers had soared.
In 1952 a French physician, Paul-Félix Armand-Delille, inoculated two rabbits with the myxoma virus on his estate in Eure-et-Loir. He assumed that the enclosed nature of his estate would prevent its spread but the disease disseminated rapidly and by the following year had reached the UK and Ireland where it wiped out an estimated 99% of the rabbit population.
The decimation of rabbits, a major source of food for buzzards, as well as a rise in the use of organochlorine pesticides, had a major impact on the population and numbers fell to just 10,000 birds.
In 1954 the Protection of Birds Act was passed in Parliament which designated buzzards a protected species. This was a significant moment in the development of legislation to protect wild birds and their habitats making it illegal to kill or injure wild birds, or damage or destroy their nests.
With the withdrawal of pesticides, a recovery in the rabbit population, breeding and release programmes, and gamekeepers starting to understand that buzzards pose a very limited threat to their sport, buzzard numbers once again began to rise.
Since the year 2000 buzzards have nested in every county in the UK and it’s estimated that the total population if you include birds not yet old enough to breed is around 300,000. Ironically one of the things that has contributed to the resurgence in their population is the very thing that brought them to the brink of extinction in the first place.
Every year millions of young gamebirds are released which coincides with buzzards feeding their young, and although only a very tiny proportion of gamebirds are taken by buzzards this appears to be enough to help sustain some of the population.
Unfortunately, we can’t expect buzzards to observe social-distancing but as we mentioned attacks on humans are very rare and will usually result in only minor lacerations. If you’re concerned about being attacked by a buzzard or any bird of prey then avoid areas where they are known to be nesting, wear a hat to protect yourself, and beat a hasty retreat if you see one eyeing you up from its perch. If you get hurt by a buzzard get yourselves checked out by a medic – you may need stitches and a tetanus jab to be on the safe side.
3 Responses
I was sitting in my garden yesterday I noticed 2 large birds off prey in sky above me very big wing span I stretch my arm out has had cramps in my arms one off them came down like a rocket at me just got in to my front door and it shot pass my door was this bird attacking me I think so Stafford
A Buzzard by nature is lazy, if you had a dead Rabbit that has laid there for several days or one running in the same field GUESS what one he will go for? Hence the term ‘he’s a lazy old Buzzard’ so if you see a buzzard on a lamb ‘it was possibly dead to start with’ they are one of nature’s clean up friends
I have noticed a considerable increase in the buzzard population where I live on the Staffordshire Shropshire border, at the same time my garden hasn’t seen many small birds. We get the odd Robin whenever I start digging and a few sparrows, I don’t think I have seen any chaffinches or blue tits this year.