Young buzzard’s life saved

This 28 June 2018 video from Drenthe province in the Netherlands is about a young buzzard, now in an artificial nest after falling from its parents’ nest.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Man builds artificial nest to save young buzzard

It is an artificial nest, but it saves a young buzzard in the Drenthe-Friesian Wold national park. Kees van der Klauw has built a nest for the young buzzard that had fallen from its own nest.

Van der Klauw found the young bird on the ground next to the tree where the parents have their eyrie. “Around the tree trunk under the nest I have attached plastic so that pine martens can not pass, branches hang over the nest so that the young buzzard is sheltered from other birds of prey, like the goshawk.”

Natural environment

Van der Klauw has asked advice from bird of prey expert Rob Bijlsma and says that this is an excellent solution. Young animals from the raptor shelter often do not survive because their parents do not teach them to hunt. Now the parents are still there and as soon as the young bird will be able to fly, it will go back to its parents.

That will take another week or three. Until then, Van der Klauw brings dead mice to the temporary nest in the morning and in the evening.

The young bird is between six and eight weeks old. How old exactly is hard to say due to the difficult start in life of the little buzzard. The parents did leave mice for it when it was on the ground, but it could not do anything with them, so maybe the youngster is small for its age. Meanwhile, however, it knows how to handle the mice that Van der Klauw brings.

He has engaged his circle of acquaintances to collect as many mice as possible. “I prefer to take them directly because my wife does not want them in the fridge”, he says to RTV Drenthe. In the coming weeks he will have an appointment with the young buzzard at least twice a day.