My name is Dania and I work as a nature-mentor in Lower Austria.
In the Wilderness scene most of us have nature based names.
Mine is „Buzzard‘s Eye“ and today I will tell you the story about my wild name.
With my family, two dogs and one cat I live nearby a forest. Minimum once a day I enjoy a walk into the woods and I also have a secret sitspot there.
Last summer I often saw a common buzzard, who sat on the path but every time I passed with the dogs he flew away.
One day he did not. He stayed there right in front of me and the dogs.
First me and the dogs stood still and looked at him, waiting for him to fly away. But he did not.
So I started to move again. Carefully and slowly. Only a few steps. Nothing. The buzzard kept on sitting at his place on the pathway.
With the dogs I could not go on without frightening the buzzard and I brought them back a few meters and fixed their leash around a tree.
Slowly I moved close to the buzzard who looked at me without moving.
Around his right eye were a lot of flies and his left wing seemed to hang.
I kneeled down just in front of the injured raptor whispering to him that I will leave but will come back as soon as possible without dogs but with someone to help him. The raptor seemed to listen.
I picked up the dogs and ran home with them as fast as possible to call a friend who is veterinarian.
More than half an hour later she arrived and we ran back together into the forest.
And there he still sat, the buzzard, looking at me and awaiting the help I promised to him.
Without resistance the vet was able to pick him up and to put him into a transportbox.
Slowly we carried the buzzard to the vet‘s car, where she wanted to stabilize his circulation.
But the buzzard looked like a little child pressing his beak together. Again I kneeled down in front of him and whispered to him: „That is the help I promised to you. Please open your beak and take these drops.“
His good eye fixed on me he opened his beak and let the vet do her job.
I still whispered to him - keep up, they will help you - as the vet closed the door and drove away with him to a veterinarian specialized in wild animals half an hour away.
In the evening they told me that the buzzard was very old and lost sight on his right eye. So he was not able to hunt anymore, became devitalized and he would have starved if I would not have found him.
For the next critical days I asked the birds for help. They should give me a feather every day for the old buzzard to regain his strength again.
And they helped their companion. Every day for a week I found a big feather in the forest and put it in my hair like a wing.
In the end of the week I had eleven wonderful feathers in my braid when I went to my forest sitspot. And there was lying another one, the biggest of all, directly on my sitspot.
The old buzzard had begun to eat by himself so he was able to move to a falconry where he gets his feed without hunting but can fly whenever he wants.
Since then my name is „Bussardauge“ - Buzzard‘s Eye.