WHEN former gamekeeper Peter Moore of Pillowell discovered a party of huge birds visiting a stand of pine trees behind his home he couldn't believe his eyes – or his ears.

"They were bigger than buzzards, and they were making very guttural calls which I have never heard in a bird of prey," said Peter, who was so puzzled he called the Review.

"And crows, which are normally bold enough to attack buzzards, left these fellows well alone."

A call to our bird expert RSPB officer Ivor Proctor, a camera and tripod planted at Peter's house and a tape recorder at the ready eventually provided the answer ... but not before our minds had strayed to thoughts that perhaps they were vultures, and perhaps, just perhaps, the saga of the vulture on the vicar's roof would happen here in the Forest!

Ivor's surmise was first that they were probably buzzards ... now common throughout the Forest ... or a rarer cousin the honey buzzard, or maybe even a goshawk, a species just beginning to reestablish itself here.

Not a bit of it said Peter – he had encountered buzzards as a gamekeeper in the Midlands and his discoveries resembled none of them, especially the way they sounded.

Damp, humid days intervened and the birds did not reappear – but then, over the weekend, there was a breakthrough – and Peter caught them on tape and on camera.

They were still around on Monday – by now numbering six – and a visit confirmed beyond doubt that they were ... ravens.

"It is undoubtedly a family group, four young and two adults, so they have bred very successfully – and the lack of very tall cliffs nearby suggests they have nested in trees," said Ivor Proctor, who added they were not rare in the Forest especially in winter when they tended to flock together.

"Naturalist Chris Ridler once spotted a flock of 26 or 27 over Bream."

However the large relatives of the crow were shy and large families were rare, so they had probably been encouraged to nest in a new site by the lack of activity in the woods through foot and mouth.

Peter had never encountered ravens in the Midlands, where they are rarely seen – "But I've seen them at the Tower of London, where they seem much smaller ... and of course they don't fly there," he said.

He wasn't too disappointed he hadn't discovered an out and out rarity.

"There's such a lot of bird life around here. I'll do teas for twitchers on my terrace at 50p a head," he said.