\n Ellie Crane was enjoying a lunch break with colleagues from Upper Hill School in Portslade yesterday (April 23), when a large bird of prey landed behind them.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The 22-year-old said one of her colleagues first spotted the \u201cmajestic\u201d bird.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere\u2019s a spot outside the school where we all congregate for lunch\u201d, Ellie said. \u201cSuddenly, one of the teaching assistants said \u2018what the hell is that? That is not a seagull.\u2019\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe all turned around, and there was this big majestic bird, flapping its feathers.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n ‘That is not a seagull’, as one of Ellie’s colleagues put it (Image: Ellie Crane)\n<\/p>\n
\n Ellie is unsure whether it was a buzzard, or perhaps a red-tailed hawk, but says she and her colleagues were amazed to see\u00a0it sitting there so calmly.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt was incredibly domesticated\u201d, Ellie said. \u201cWe were sat right next to it and it didn\u2019t move.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It had a tag around its leg as well, so it\u2019s likely someone\u2019s pet, or it got out from a local animal sanctuary.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt seemed like\u00a0an escapee for sure.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Ellie was on a lunch break with colleagues from Upper Hill School when she saw the bird (Image: Ellie Crane)\n<\/p>\n
\n The bird then experienced a typically Brightonian encounter, when it became perturbed\u00a0by a group of seagulls.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt got bothered by some seagulls and flew away\u201d, Ellie said. \u201cIt flew away, my\u00a0break ended, and I went back inside.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cStill, it\u2019s not every day you see a buzzard on your lunch break!\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Ellie said the bird seemed ‘incredibly domesticated’ (Image: Ellie Crane)\n<\/p>\n
\n Believing the bird to have escaped from somewhere, Ellie posted some pictures of it on Facebook in the hope that its owner might see them.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n In response, some suggested the bird might be a rare hybrid known as a \u2018Ferrutail\u2019 – a cross between a red-tailed hawk and a ferruginous hawk – though no one has got\u00a0in touch with her so far to claim it.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019d just be nice for it to get home – whether that\u2019s in a sanctuary, a wildlife centre, or as somebody\u2019s pet\u201d, Ellie said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful bird.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellie Crane was enjoying a lunch break with colleagues from Upper Hill School in Portslade yesterday (April 23),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-548615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}