It rained this morning….hard! Not to worry though because that meant that Baz would almost certainly be perching, one-legged style (to keep one foot warm and alternating feet every ten minutes or so) on his most special of rocks atop his favourite Cotswold stone wall. He nearly always does it when the rain is heavy and he usually turns up around 1000hrs. So it was just a case of getting there before he did….which I did at 0930hrs, but he didn’t show up until gone 1100hrs and I got absolutely drenched and pretty damn cold waiting for him. I was about 50m away and I’m afraid the rain combined with poor light to reduce the image quality, but at least I got something for my efforts!

I like Baz….He’s a bit of a character, but I worry about him. He doesn’t appear to be particularly good at catching “live” prey and has resorted to “ambushing” road kills! There are hundreds of pheasants around here and lots of Rabbits. Many of them end up squashed in the lane running alongside his territory and Baz takes full advantage of the easy meals. However, once he’s “caught” the unfortunate road victim, he immediately adopts a protective stance, covering his prey with his wings in typical Raptor fashion and refuses to budge even for cars! He then spends fifteen or twenty minutes eating his meal right there in the road instead of carrying it off to some favourite perch or other! Sometimes this happens virtually in the middle of the lane and vehicles are forced to go around him! Sooner or later though, someone will fail to notice him or some moron will deliberately run him over! I’ve taken to passing that way a couple of times a day if I can and fling any road kills I see into the hedges and out of sight. It’s only a very quiet country lane, but the sooner Baz masters the art of “proper” hunting the better!