But now buzzards, one of the most impressive birds of prey, are being seen soaring in skies all over our area.

Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust countryside manager Graham Workman believes that there could be as many as 20 pairs who have left the national park areas to re-colonise the borough.

Buzzard numbers plummeted dangerously in the 1950s when the man-made pest control disease myxomatosis killed off 99% of rabbits, their main food source.

They have also suffered at the hands of gamekeepers who illegally poisoned them to protect grouse and pheasant stocks on shooting estates and suffered greatly from the organochlorine pesticide contamination before the banning of DDT which damaged their reproduction.

Mr Workman said: "Buzzards are now being see all over Wigan and I think it is fantastic.
"I am regularly seeing them over my house in Haigh, they are always above the flashes, Pennington, Orrell, the complete range of the borough infact.

"If you spend any time looking up from any of our greener areas you will be unlucky not to see one, rather than the other way around.
"Ten or 15 years ago they were a very rare sight, even though they had always passed over.

"It would really be something among bird watchers in Wigan to see one, and you would have to travel to Wales or up into the Lake district.
"Wigan is now a very real breeding territory for them and it says a lot about the way that the area is being regenerated for wildlife."

The RSPB says that the slow expansion along the edge of the main range has speeded up over the last few years and the species is now rapidly recolonising its former homes.
But its current distribution still reflects past persecution.

The genuine strongholds of the bird remain parts of West Country, Wales and Scotland. In 2001, the UK population was estimated at around 44,000 territorial pairs.