Common Buzzard

In February 2009 I fulfilled an ambition I had held for years, to photograph common buzzards - in the wild, in Kent. Why? Well, up until 20 years ago they were quite a rare sight around these parts (North Downs) but over the years they had moved further southeast to a point that it’s now highly unusual not to see one while out on the hills and there are now well over a thousand pairs in this county.

OK, so they are incredibly common in the west and north and hardly magnificent golden eagles but there is just something about them. The way they soar, their call……..Over the years, as I visited my woodland birds' feeding station, the desire would burn deeper and deeper to photograph this beautiful bird. I am privileged to have access to a lot of land within their territory and so, in October 2008 I decided to commit the following six months to this project. But everything, and I mean everything, had to be by the book. Birds of prey are notoriously shy and keen-eyed and so, unlike a blue tit at a nut feeder where you can come and go from your hide without them so much as batting an eyelid, with buzzards, in this part of the world, not a chance!
The story can be read in full on my blog, here. 

Equipment note
For all the images I used a Nikon D2x with a 300 f/2.8 AFS often with a Nikon TC-14B 1.4x teleconverter attached. The light levels and snow (which acted as a huge reflector) helped with generating a reasonably fast shutter speed (between 1/250 and 1/400) while keeping the ISO low (200 and 400). In order to obtain a low perspective, I attached the tripod head to a piece of MDF (with a tent peg in each corner) and used a right-angle finder attachment which resulted in me having my head between my knees for much of the session.