September 2026 Ramsbury Bird Notes by Paul Swan

Buzzard

This has been a bumper month for sightings and reported sightings, many involving raptors. Some friends were enjoying tea in their garden when they heard squealing from above. Looking up they saw a squirrel being carried off in the talons of a buzzard! Walking to Littlecote we were first treated to the sight of a peregrine falcon sitting in a tree, and a few minutes later to a kestrel swooping and catching a vole. The wonderful ability of kestrels to keep their heads stationary as they search for prey gives these birds their old country name, 'the windhover'.

The garden birds have gone very quiet as many of them are going through the annual moult, where they replace every feather over a period of three or four weeks, leaving them very vulnerable. One of the few birds that you might see during this process is the robin, which can often be seen in August with completely bald heads!

The sighting of the month was at Seven Bridges and a first time ever for the observers. A young cuckoo perched precariously on a wire with its foster parent reed warbler in close attention. That young cuckoo will now be on the way to Africa, guided only by instinct and the earth's magnetic field.