It was one of those quiet estate walks, the kind you take without expecting anything in particular, when a mass of sticks high in an old oak gave the game away. A buzzard’s nest, built into the fork of the tree with the kind of solid, unhurried construction that suggests it’s been added to for years rather than built in a single season.

Buzzards have become one of the great conservation stories of the British countryside. Once pushed to the margins by persecution and pesticide use, they’re now the most widespread bird of prey in the country, and a pair choosing an old oak on the estate is a sign of exactly the kind of habitat that supports them. Mature trees, open grassland to hunt over, hedgerows and woodland edge to shelter in. All the things a working estate, managed with half an eye on wildlife as well as farming, tends to provide.

Finding the nest doesn’t mean much will change. The pair will go on doing what buzzards do, circling high on warm afternoons, calling to each other with that thin, mewing cry that carries a long way, and raising their young somewhere just out of easy sight. But it’s a small reminder of what’s living alongside the fields and the fences, mostly unnoticed, and worth pausing for when you happen to catch it.