Buzzards in Britain

Fourteen-year-old Countryfile Magazine reader George Whitcroft looks at the decline and resurgence of one of Britain's most common birds of prey

It’s a sight I almost, but not quite, take for granted. The beautiful birds of prey perched high up in a tree outside my village or even soaring and wheeling over my house in their endless search for prey.

It seemed to me that they must always have been as much a part of life here in rural south Northamptonshire as foxes and rabbits. So it came as a shock to learn that this had not always been the case.

Talk to anyone who grew up here in the 60s and 70s and they will tell you that seeing a buzzard back then was a rare, almost unheard of occurrence.

Even my mother who grew up in this county, spending hours walking and riding through its rolling fields and prolific woodland, cannot recall seeing buzzards or any indeed any bird of prey when she was a child. And in fact this situation continued right up until the turn of the century. Local bird expert Paul Egerton, who has lived in this area for over 25 years, agrees.

“Buzzards were all but vanished from Northamptonshire,” he says. “By the year 2000 there was no more than one or two pairs in this area and the only time I ever saw them in numbers was in the western side of Wales and Scotland where there was higher ground. Now there are at least 20-30 pairs within a few miles radius of where I live. That is a lot of birds in a very short space of time.”

It’s undeniable that buzzards were once one of the most common sights of rural landscapes. So what had happened to make their numbers decline then rise so dramatically? Local folk law has it that the buzzards decline because of the rising use of pesticides such as DDT which got into the food chain and poisoned not just the buzzards but the animals they ate.

The theory went that once those pesticides were banned nature re-asserted herself and the buzzards fought their way back to their old habitats. But according to Geoff Knott of the RSPB the finger of blame points to a more familiar – and for us uncomfortable - culprit for this decline.

“Buzzards started to decline in the early 19th century mainly as a result of persecution by man,“ he says. “Game sports such as sport shooting which was very widespread in the UK and birds – any big birds - were pretty much seen as fair game. Buzzards were very large, very common and very obvious. The perfect target.

“The amount of hunting must have been quite large because very quickly, from the late nineteenth century onwards, the buzzards went from being very common and widespread birds to ones which were only seen in western and northern counties.”

Today it’s very hard to believe that people would hunt such beautiful birds, but back then hunting was a normal and accepted part of rural life. As if to prove the point during the First and Second World War the buzzard population shot up, because all their hunters were going off to fight for their country. Sure enough, on their return the buzzard population decreased again.

According to Geoff people were aware that the buzzard population had declined and it wasn’t until the early 20th-century that conservation began to become a significant factor in rural life. “People actually noticed the decline in the buzzard population very early on,“ he says. “It was very obvious that the buzzard population was declining and it was also obvious why. But it wasn’t until attitudes towards hunting changed that the buzzards could begin to return to their former stronghold.”

Even then it wasn’t all plain sailing for the beleaguered buzzards! “They had a dip in their recovery in 1950 when myxamatosis (corr) was introduced,” says Geoff “The rabbit population was a massive food source for the buzzards and the effect of myxamatosis on the buzzard population lasted until the 1970s until the rabbit population started to increase again.”

According to Geoff there are now around 44 thousand pairs of buzzards spread throughout the UK, but what does the future hold for this stunning bird of prey?

“They are now breeding in every county in the UK which is great news because it means the buzzard population has recovered to its previous levels and we have a healthy buzzard population,” he says. “Now just about everywhere you go you have chance of seeing these amazing birds in action. It is a tremendous success story.”

George Whitcroft