Great excitement in the figbat household this morning. We were all preparing to make a start on various working and schooling form home activities when Master figbat runs into our home office (spare room) shouting "look at the trampoline!". For context, both his bedroom and the home office overlook the rear garden from the first floor, where a trampoline sits replete with safety net held up by a number of vertical poles.
The family figbat duly gathered in the office and looked at the trampoline - sat majestically atop one of the poles was a buzzard. Where we live they are not exactly rare, but the skies are normally filled with red kites meaning you don't see many buzzards around - this is the first we've seen perched in the garden. Happenstance would have it that the home office also doubles as my camera storage vault, so I reached for my best DSLR and grabbed the longest lens I have, removing the resident 50mm f/1.8 and snicking the 100-300mm f/4 into place with practiced ease. And as is often the way, the 'camera-being-lifted-into-position' sensor of the buzzard clearly went off and just as I raised the eyepiece to my eye it took off and disappeared.
Still, it was nice that the kids still get excited about wildlife and a pleasure to see this bird at close-ish quarters.