You do know what day it is don’t you?
Yesterday, in rural Bedfordshire, I was passing a field of unharvested beans, where the beans looked brown and crispy. I saw a raptor flying low over the crop and I wondered whether it might just be a marsh harrier so I pulled over and had a proper look.
It wasn’t a marsh harrier – just a buzzard. But as I looked across the field I noticed another buzzard and another. They were flying over the beans and dropping into the crop in various places. In the late morning sunshine I wondered what they were catching and feeding upon. There were up to five buzzards over the field at any particular time, up to three in the hedge on one side of the field, sometimes a couple on the ground in the next-door stubble field and up to eight high in the air over this particular field. There were certainly at least 13 buzzards involved and it may have been many more as I couldn’t keep track of their comings and goings.
As is often the case, because I was looking in the sky, I saw a hobby hawking for insects too.
Why were these buzzards so interested in this field of beans – any ideas?
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Rats most likely, they’ll feed on beans at this time of year.
Alan – that was my guess but difficult to tell. So maybe the buzzards were doing a great service in rodent control – would be a shame to bump them off to save the pheasants which don’t need saving anyway…
and – I have a book for you but lost your address… (how hopeless of me)
They’d ‘bean’ there before! Like my beans they attract mice. voles and rats to feed on them so you need a good predator to sort them out. See the chapter called ‘Chollerford Bean field’ in my latest book.
Thirteen buzzards in one field! You will have the anti-raptor brigade frothing at the mouth and wanting to ‘restore the balance’ whatever that may be!
Jonathan – I know, wicked to wind them up isn’t it… 😉
Are you sure that mice eat beans? I’ve stored beans over winter in a shed which has it’s share of visiting rodents and whilst they eat almost everything else including the soap they never touch the beans. All the big concentrations of buzzards I have seen, and my best last year on a single field was 27,have been worming. It could well be that in the moist shaded environment of a bean field in the weather we have had this summer the worms were out and about and buzzards simply love them.
Completely agree with Ian about the love of Buzzards for a juicy worm. My record count was one early autumn day in a field near St Just in Cornwall – whilst looking for a Common Crane reported nearby, we found a stubble field with no less than 52 Buzzards either in or perched around it. Those in the field were avidly feeding on worms, presumably brought to the surface by heavy rain during the night.
Jon – yes, worms are indeed a possibility. I wonder why they found them all in a bean field though? we’ll never know, perhaps but it was an enjoyable sight. And the hobby was so typical – if you spend some time looking into the sky in southern England you are quite likely to see them these days.