long shot, but can you identify this bird

Mallards trailmonkey. The most common duck in the UK.

You really don’t get crows and ravens in Worcs?

ispot can be a useful website for this type of thing.

Crows yes, ravens not so much as they are an upland bird, they like mountains.

Its a crow in the pic anyway.

Just found an old pic of mine, can anyone ID these for me?

click for full size

I’d go for crow or raven.

Head / neck looks to long in proportion to wing root / shoulder position for a buzzard… (buzzard looks like it has short neck and head, whereas crow / raven has wings more “in the middle” – as do seagulls. The pic is silhouetted, so it could be one of the larger gulls.

ravens not so much as they are an upland bird, they like mountains.

Not so much these days. Loads of ravens where my parents live, and they are pretty much at sea level. Like buzzards, their numbers have increased dramatically over the last few decades

Can any STW ornothologists tell me why this chirpy little fellow has overcome his fear of humans?
He let me freewheel right up next to him and take a close-up photo…. 😉

There, told ya.

(That appears to be the rare pebble-thrush, slugwash)

Like buzzards, their numbers have increased dramatically over the last few decades

where have all the buzzards come from..?

I used to know of a couple of places that we could always spot one or two on car journeys as kids..
now I see them daily.. all over the place.. often four or five per day..

Most of the birds of prey species have recovered incredibly well since the ban on DDT type pesticides and a masive reduction in game keepers targeting raptors and egg collectors going for the nest(although both of these do still happen)

ETA, not aware that gamekeepers used to kill egg collectors 😆

MrFox did you look in on this thread thinking there might be an easy meal?

Impossible to say what the bird is really. Seeing it flying would make a lot of difference and obviously there was something about it that caught your attention – edit, no I see it was caught by accident.

I’ve recently been going through old video tapes and checked some footage shot on the Isle of kerrera few years back. There was what we suspected to be an eagle but it was difficult to see it against the light. It was also hard to see the screen while filming. The footage showed very clearly that it was a sea eagle. Easy to see but zoomed in camera hosepiping meant poor footage.

Nice to have the question cleared up though.

I have seen loads of sea eagles in the US, along the Mississippi where they winter in high concentrations. I also suspect I saw a pair of Golden Eagles in the French Alps years ago, but not sure.

it’s definately not any sort of eagle