Buzzard at dusk.

Here, the Buzzard is about to depart with the meat.

I had quite a "mini" adventure late this afternoon. After the Christmas excesses of the last 72 hours you are almost housebound if not actually chairbound. Eventually I had eaten enough gammon, turkey and Quality Street so I popped out to the hide. It was quite late in the afternoon and with darkness descending by 4.30, I only had a short time if I was going to take any photos but that wasn't the only reason I went. It was pleasant out in the wood, because I had not been for a day or so, all the food had been taken and the place was deserted. The rabbit carcass was striped of flesh and was a bag of skin and bones wth all the flesh picked clean. All around the log, the grass was brown and muddy where the foxes had been pulling at the rabbit and trying to get it free. As well as that, there was copious white guanno from a Buzzard. It was good to see this much activity. Dick had left me a squirrel..... thanks again Dick........ I have no regrets about the demise of a Grey Squirrel, I am not a Budhist so I don't feel particularly sad about a dead Grey Squirrel. They are not native to the UK and it's actually against the law, if you catch one, to release it back in to the wild. They damage our resident birds and even our woodlands. Squirrels actually destroy healthy trees by ring-stripping the bark. I agree, they look cute but all in all, we would be better off without them. Buzzards will take a Squirrel carcass and pieces of squirrel meat so I put a piece on the gate post with fur attached. I retreated to my hide but didn't even put the lens on the camera, I wasn't expecting a Buzzard to be honest. It was enjoyable being outside and I was just staring accross the fields, smelling the air and listening out for bird calls. At 4.15 it was getting dim and suddenly, surprisingly, a Buzzard flew on to the gate, grabbed the piece of Squirrel and flew off. I could have photographed it for sure so I put another piece on the same post and went back to the hide and waited. After 15 minutes, about as long as I expected, it came back to the gate and post, investigated the piece of meat, picked it up and flew off! Bingo! The camera's setiing were extreme to say the least. 6400 ISO only gave me 1/50 of a second with the lens at 4.5. Its a mirracle that I managed any kind of shot at all.