Honey Buzzard

A couple of days ago I photographed a raptor that honestly had me a bit stumped, it was a Buzzardy type thing but it didn't seem to fit any of my ideas of what Buzzardy things should look like!   So I emailed the pictures to a few people and the answer came back - it was an early 1st year Honey Buzzard, the shape was obviously right but it was a plumage that I had never seen before.

A real educational bird (a term usually reserved for very dull, obscure races of dull obscure birds but this was pretty smart!)