When I was a child in Central Southern England I enjoyed watching wild life and was especially interested in raptors. Unfortunately apart from the odd kestrel hovering at the side of the road there was nothing to see. The effects of DDT had resulted in raptors dying out in many parts of the UK due to producing infertile eggs. Also raptors had been persecuted by gamekeepers and only did relatively well in Scotland, Wales and Northern and Western England.

When we visited my Granny in the Highlands there were plenty of buzzards to be seen, though she was always telling me that the golden eagle was the "real thing". With so little to see my interest in raptors totally waned in my teens.

Twenty years later, living in Bavaria, my eldest son started to ask me what the birds with hooked beaks were that were often sitting on fence posts. The were (common) buzzards. Together we took more and more interest in raptors and ended up seeing an impressive list of birds.

We realised that in winter there were rough-legged buzzards and hen harriers visiting from Scandanavia and Finland. In Summer there were hobbies visiting from Africa and we even once saw a rare Montagu's harrier. We realised that there were plenty of sparrow hawks hunting in our town. We even saw the odd goshawk or peregrine falcon.

    buzzard

A favourite place to see raptors was near a village in Oberbayern SE of Munich where we often went for walks. There were paths across fields and woods, so plenty of variety of scenery. We often saw raptors with 10 buzzards in the air being quite common.

I bought a cheap 500 mm lens and tried to take photos. With a manually focused lens it is very hard to get an object sharp, let alone if it is moving. I will try to scan some of my photos but I have had difficulty getting the original quality after scanning.