The phrase "a buddy called" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in informal contexts to refer to a friend who has made a phone call.
Example: "I was just sitting down to dinner when a buddy called to see if I wanted to hang out."
Alternatives: "a friend called" or "a pal called".
It paid more than any other gig he'd had — more than all three of the jobs, combined, that he'd been working simultaneously before a buddy called and invited him into the well-paid world of the oil and gas industry.
Last year a buddy called my attention to this sentence in a major review article in Nature Climate Change: "Recent advances in behavioral and decision science also tell us that emotion is an integral part of our thinking, perceptions, and behavior, and can be essential for making well-judged decisions".
Josh Hart, out after knee surgery, found out when a buddy called him on his way into the arena.
One morning, a well-meaning swimming buddy called out for all in the Y locker room to hear: "I can't believe Jane Brody doesn't do yoga!" She was right: I didn't do yoga and, not knowing what it might offer me, I was loath to try it.
Then, out of the blue, an old high school buddy called from East Hampton, N.Y.
Tom McGuane, a fishing buddy, calls him the Tiny Terror but insists that the coinage is Tom Brokaw's.
Its so-called "buddy" call centres in neighbouring shire counties were themselves fully-stretched.
In Shortsville, New York, about 30 miles east of Rochester, reindeer brothers Moose and Little Buddy call a little farm home.
I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night.
Instead, he carried people and supplies ("trash hauling," he and his buddies called it) around the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.
On Feb. 6, one of Misaka's buddies called him in Bountiful, Utah, and told him to watch Lin playing for the Knicks at the Garden.
