Buzzard Hot Spot

I quite regularly see behaviour from a common subject that I have never seen before and the image above captures just that !

I was watching Buzzards circling in a blue sky which was peppered with Cotton wool clouds and on three occasions in around two hours I watched one of the Buzzards descend onto a south facing rock ledge when the sun came clear of the clouds. It left again twice as soon as clouds re-shaded the cliff.

The sequence of images below show the bird arriving on the ledge, spread its wings wide and flattening its entire body against the same area of bare, dark and warm rock face for ten to twenty minutes at a time only to leave again as the cliff went into cloud shadow,

I have to assume that the bird was demonstrating this behaviour in order to bring up its body temperature with warmth from the sunshine on a ledge that was also protected from the prevailing wind,  There was no stashed prey, nest or chicks on the ledge to be guarded and the birds wing spread was at full stretch on each occasion,

On this third occasion the sunny period was quite long and the bird left while in full sunlight which enabled me to complete this sequence with the take off images.

So perhaps this truly is a Buzzard Hot Spot !!