Colin Capon on Buzzards

Yeah, that’s right. It’s quite amazing where all these buzzards have suddenly come from, I don’t know why, what has changed that has helped them but they … not so much these days but we used to have lots of bits of land that we could cut hay off or silage or grass or cut grass whatever you did with it and various places in the West Wight you could always see buzzards, you know in the summer months particularly and you’d see ’em soaring up in the sky.

And we know they clear out partridges ‘cos I remember down at the field down the back of the quarry, many years ago this is, I remember being on the … we were there on the Friday cutting and it came on to rain and there were the parent birds, the parent partridge with a covey of, well I couldn’t really say,16 or 18, difficult to count them when they are little chicks moving around, and it stayed wet over the next day, dried up on Sunday and went back on the Monday and I saw these parent birds and there were about three little chicks.

I thought well that must have been the wet weather I suppose, I know they don’t like it wet, and no sooner thought that and a buzzard came in and picked ’em up and they cleared the lot out.

That’s where the other two went as well.