The Gull Alarm Went Off And...

Craning my neck through the kitchen sink window I saw this at about half eleven this morning. 

 

"It's a Buzzard" 

"It's always a Buzzard"

"Huh..."

I scrambled for the camera and got this;

Cropped a touch

Lower belly, vent, undertail are stained with the local mud.

Only other image is this;

Again, cropped to centre

It got very high very fast [at least 8 Herring Gulls were an incentive] and I lost it; no idea which way it went.

Now, I'm on the wrong side of the country, but, well...

It's a Buzzard, right?

Right?

Be Seeing You...

PostScript:

Well, after a lot of pondering - especially about those angled wings - I decided to stick the pictures up on the Dreaded ID Section of a certain online forum about birds and see what those who actually see RLBs regularly thought. They were unimpressed at my photo skills [I mean, come on, not everybody can afford a 10k DSLR setup] and the bird's inconveniently muddy arse [like I wasn't], but after only a touch of prodding, they produced an array of odd Common Buzzard shots. Go look up the thread [no, I'm not linking them] and see a wonderful CB/RLB comparison in particular. Also a thread about a possible LLB.

The upshot is that, while I'm still not entirely convinced that's a CB, I'm certainly unconvinced it's a RLB. It's a buzzard sp. of some sort [[whisper 'hybrid theory'... They do exist!]] but beyond that ID is not safe. So a ? and definitely not my best Out Of The Window shot ever.

Bugger.

BUT, all that stuff means I am far better-equipped to nail a non-juvenile RLB*, should one turn up.  [Are you, reading birders?]

[[* Juveniles are EASY, any birder would nail one. Immatures and adults... Especially ones not next to a handy CB for comparison?? Hmm... ]]