I heard someone say recently that abundance of predators means abundance of prey. If you don't have many hares but lots of buzzards, they must be eating something else.Leverets are a major target of buzzards, we have too many round us but as usual idiot "experts" made them protected when they were rare but dont allow culling when too many, of course it is the farmers fault when hares are near extinct
I heard someone say recently that abundance of predators means abundance of prey. If you don't have many hares but lots of buzzards, they must be eating something else.
Humans are the only animals to hunt things to extinction.
Plenty of examples to prove it.Do you think your last statement is true ?
Boom or bust, too many predators and they almost remove one prey, the predator then dies from starvation hopefully allowing the prey to rebuild numbers and the cycle repeats, as long as one doesn't die out completelyI heard someone say recently that abundance of predators means abundance of prey. If you don't have many hares but lots of buzzards, they must be eating something else.
Humans are the only animals to hunt things to extinction.
The balance of nature you mean?Boom or bust, too many predators and they almost remove one prey, the predator then dies from starvation hopefully allowing the prey to rebuild numbers and the cycle repeats, as long as one doesn't die out completely
If it was totally nature the hares in this instance would have far more natural cover from either shrub, trees or grasses instead of young leverets having lots of cover from a crop of grass that suddenly gets mowed exposing them in a totally new situationThe balance of nature you mean?
I have noticed that too, and watched the kites clearing buzzards from their new territory.Buzzards here murder any leverets they can find, breaks my heart to see. I have noticed that since we have had an influx of red kites that buzzard numbers seemed to have dropped which is great news.
It would be nothing unusual to count 14+ buzzards in a thermal at a time.
Surprising how brave buzzards are, my JR spotted one that had a rabbit on the ground, off he went into the field, where he tried to take the rabbit off the buzzard, which he did but the buzzard didnt give it up easily, amazing to witness.
I witnessed a hare putting herself between a leveret (under a straw swath) and a fox all through a thermal scope, unfortunately I didnt realise what was happening until it was too late and the fox had the leveret, as soon as I knew I dropped the fox but it was too late.One spring I saw a hare putting itself between a leveret and a buzzard. What attracted my attention in the first place was seeing the hare sitting bolt upright, making it look as big as possible.
I heard someone say recently that abundance of predators means abundance of prey. If you don't have many hares but lots of buzzards, they must be eating something else.
Humans are the only animals to hunt things to extinction.
Find quite a few dead by overhead power lines and by the roadsides.No, they die out when there isn't enough food left, or they move on to hunt elsewhere.
We have far fewer buzzards here than we did 5 years ago, and regularly find the remains of them in the fields (and no, nobody here is shooting or poisoning them).
Interesting, as mostly birds of prey do seem to be on the increase. I wonder if they are still recovering from the ddt related population collapse?No, they die out when there isn't enough food left, or they move on to hunt elsewhere.
We have far fewer buzzards here than we did 5 years ago, and regularly find the remains of them in the fields (and no, nobody here is shooting or poisoning them).
Plenty of examples to prove it.
Interesting, as mostly birds of prey do seem to be on the increase. I wonder if they are still recovering from the ddt related population collapse?
What do you put your local population decline down to?