Broedzorg voor een gevallen Buizerd Buteo buteo

Since 1996, breeding raptors have been monitored in a plot of 8503 ha in the central part of the province of Frisia. During one of our nest checks in 2009, a Buzzard nest was found to have dropped on the shore of a nearby pool; one of the two chicks had drowned, but the other one, 31 days old, had survived and was found in hiding underneath Prunus serotina. Three days previously, this nest had still been undamaged, albeit already sloping dangerously. As a replacement, a small platform was built in a Sorbus aucuparia, at a height of 2 metres. In the following weeks, the site was visited several times to check on the condition of the artificial nest and the chick. On 22 June, i.e. 11 days after the event, the male chick was still on the nest, surrounded by a pile of 17 (partly decomposed and maggot-infested) Moles Talpa europaea, the legs of a young Hare Lepus europaeus, an adult duck and a wader chick; on the ground three more Moles were found. After fledging, the nest was checked again (11 July) and found to contain three Moles, two young Musk Rats Ondatra zibethicus and an adult Gadwall Anas strepera. The chick, nicknamed Michael Mole (commemorating the Moles on the nest, the climber Michel, and a successful soccer player of a local club), was still present on 20 July. This episode shows (again) that raptor chicks fallen to the ground should never be transported to rehabilitation centres, but instead should be replaced on the nest, or on a nest replacement in the general vicinity of the former nest. Parental care continues unabated, irrespective of the change in nest.