Buzzards.

As a budding ornithologist growing up in East Anglia I was familiar with Buzzards only from frequent holidays in Devon to visit my Grandparents who lived on the edge of Dartmoor. Due to the well documented double whammy  of persecution & DDT poisoning they were scarce elsewhere and a bird I found, near our Suffolk village one winter, caused a minor twitch in our  as local birders came to see what would have then been a county tick for them. Rough-legged Buzzard was then a commoner winter sight than Common Buzzard on the east coast! 

Forty years later much has changed and they're now a common sight throughout the UK.  Unfortunately they're still persecuted, as are many of our birds of prey, with the main culprits being unscrupulous gamekeepers and estate managers. However, away from known raptor persecution hotspots they're thankfully no longer a rare sight.

We have a pair close to the house and they can be seen most days either perched up or hunting - last year  I even watched one swoop down and take one of our local Coots from the pond. I filmed this pair with a 'kill' from a bedroom window on a very wet Saturday last weekend. The local Magpies were taking a great deal of interest in what was going on but the Buzzards seemed quite tolerant of their presence. Buzzards are so common locally now that I had a 'kettle' of 8 birds circling over the garden whilst the weather was sunny on Sunday.