As my last blog finished, we were looking forward to a busy summer of nest watching, with the pair of buzzards settled and brooding eggs. Over the next couple of months we watched as Bosco began to bring in more food with larger legs dangling down (!), and we heard the youngsters calling for food. Mike managed a photo, from a good distance, of a downy chick poking its head up but as the nest faces away from us we were limited in what we could see.

By the end of the summer we had three beautiful young buzzards using a dead tree by their willow nest site as a handy landing place for initial flights.

Sadly, the rather beautiful bird with the lightly marked chest disappeared and we haven’t seen it since. The rest of the family stayed together until well into the autumn and we would see them high above in the thermal created by the escarpment below us.

We also had the pleasure of redpolls on the feeders for the spring and summer months of 2021, before they, like the siskins, retreated to the woods to harvest more natural foods. We have the occasional siskin now and I’m anticipating the redpolls imminent return but with this ridiculously mild weather, I may be waiting for some time!

It is with sadness that I have noted the loss of our Crow family. At the beginning of December I heard shooting the other side of the river but it was only about a week later that I realised that the familiar ’kraar’ of the male crow as he and his mate sat in the tallest tree was missing. The crows were the ’alpha’ birds, dominating the copse community, bossing the jays, keeping alert for intruders of any kind and seeing off the sparrowhawk if it landed in the copse after a garden raid. There seems to be a void now, an uncertainty, an emptyness which will, no doubt, be filled in the coming season – but for now, I miss them.