Buzzard blamed for cereal crop fire
Anthony Henman © Jessica Henman A wild buzzard is being blamed for a harvest fire that led to the loss of about a hectare of winter barley on a farm in Oxfordshire.
Anthony Henman, who farms 430ha of mainly arable ground near Islip to the north-east of Oxford, said he was combining winter barley in an adjacent field when something caught his eye.
See also: 400-strong WhatsApp group helps tackle harvest fires
“Within seconds, that field was alight, with flames jumping up to 10ft high and threatening to cross the hedge into the field we were combining,” he said.
“I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the back of the combine and ran to try and stop it.
“My colleague was also using a bucket and trying to douse it with water from a 1,000-litre bowser we keep close to hand.
© Jessica Henman
“But by then the fire was raging, so we called the fire service and I got to work with an old set of discs to try and make a fire break.”
Soon after, four fire engines arrived in the field and the fire was brought under control.
Buzzard involvement
It was only then that the team noticed a dead buzzard on the ground beneath a telegraph pole where the fire had started, lying on a patch of bare earth.
“Just one of its wings was frazzled and we could see where it had been sitting on the overhead wires and created an arc of electricity that had ignited its feathers,” said Mr Henman.
A neighbour then confirmed she had heard a loud bang from the telegraph pole seconds before the fire took hold, concluding that the buzzard must have short-circuited the system and set fire to itself in the process.
“It sounds like a freak incident, but it’s created quite a stir on social media with other farmers recounting similar tales of incendiary wildlife,” said Mr Henman.
The farmer says he is grateful that more damage did not result. “We were lucky, it was only a small 2.5ha field the fire was in, and we lost just about a third of it,” said Mr Henman.
With 40ha of wheat and 110ha of spring barley still to cut, he is hoping for an incident-free rest of harvest.