Red Kites

While back on the farm this week, the aged parents pointed out Red Kites nesting in trees by the lambing shed.  Red Kites have gone from being a very rare sight in Mid-Wales to being very common, especially around Rhayader where the artificial feeding of the Kites for the gawking tourist has meant a leap in population of these raptors.


Red Kites are distinctive because of their forked tail and striking colour - predominantly chestnut red with white patches under the wings and a pale grey head.  They have a wingspan of nearly two metres (about five-and-a-half-feet), but a relatively small body weight of 2 - 3 Ibs.  This means the bird is incredibly agile, and can stay in the air for many hours with hardly a beat of its wings.


Father is pleased as these large birds keep the crows at bay, so this means less damage to lambs is done by these opportunistic black birds.  Crows love to find vulnerable lambs and peck out eyes and navels.  Some Ravens are even worse seeming to delight in pecking out lambs tongues. They don't show that on 'Spring Watch'!


I will be keeping an eye on the kites over the next few months and hopefully they will manage to hatch out a chick, certainly they are undisturbed where they are as its well away from any public highway and the birds are left to get on with their own thing.

Starling Flocks

Starling Flocks.

The kids and I went up to a reserve close to Glastonbury to watch flocks of starlings come into roost. Shapwick Heath is a well known spot for these large flocks of starlings so we were not alone; twichers with long lenses on their cameras and spotting scopes on tripods were there.

There is something faintly amusing about these characters. Are the long lenses and long spotter scope a substitute for something lacking in their lives, like life? Or are they frustrated hunters who have given into the modern pressure of pretending nothing ever dies?

As well as twitchers there were nice normal people gathered to watch as well, some in bright colours, which did not bother the starlings, but seemed to offend the drab clothed twichers. There was even one splendid chap in tweeds and a canary coloured cravat.

No matter how we were apparelled all were amazed by the thousands of starling that swooped and wheeled making swirling amoeba like shapes in the sky. How they don't collide with one another is a mystery, I wonder does it have anything to do with their iridescent plumage, does this enable them to see and react instantly to any movement?

I quite often have starlings on my lawn, they always seem in a hurry stuffing them selves with bread and then off they go. When the lawn is short they can be seen paddling their feet to encourage the worms to come up. I wonder how the lame starling who is often out their manages; perhaps he has become a vegetarian, poor thing.

It is said that starling have a truly awful taste, and it used to be the test of a really good gun dog to see if it would retrieve one. This is sometime true of woodcock too, which gundogs do not seem to like retrieving, though my terrier never seemed to mind.

On a reminisce, the last time I saw flocks of the magnitude of Shapwick Heath was in Aberystwyth ; having finished a funeral there the undertaker and I went for tea on the sea front. While we wee enjoying old fashioned tea and scones in one of the hotels we witnessed thousands of starlings coming in to roost under the pier.