Hands deep in the washing-up bowl, I hear the unmistakable call of a buzzard. I always think of this sound – “Pyew! Pyew!” – as a cat imitating a six-shooter. What I don’t do is look up. A quarter of a century ago, when I first moved to this valley in the Sheffield suburbs, hearing a buzzard outside my house would have had me running outside to get a glimpse of it. Since then, however, buzzard numbers have more or less doubled and the raptor’s steady 20th-century recovery – accelerated by the 1954 Protection of Birds Act – has reached my neck of the woods.
I use the phrase deliberately because the narrow strip of development I inhabit is set in a much wider block of ancient coppice oak wood. To the east of the valley, beyond these woods, are a number of golf courses. This seems to me ideal habitat for a bird that builds its nest in trees but seems happiest mooching about the fairways half‑hunting for worms. Buzzards do like to hang out.
