Red Kite.

[crosslandkelly]

I've seen a lot of Red Kites while traveling along the M4 corridor, but while painting my porch this morning, I spotted the first one I've seen in this area. Good news for this beautiful, once almost extinct bird.

Not my pic unfortunately.

 

[Goatboy]

Nice stuff Mr Kelly.
Like watching them myself; there's a breeding centre not to far from here so when they aren't scared off by the large buzzard population I like watching them patrol the sky 'round here.
Also have a kestrel nest about 10 mins from the door.
Have fun watching them.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[John Fenna]

Beautiful birds - they are now quite common around here ... but I never tire of seeing them!

 

[crosslandkelly]

Wiki.

In the United Kingdom, red kites were ubiquitous scavengers that lived on carrion and rubbish. Shakespeare's King Lear describes his daughter Goneril as a detested kite, and he wrote "when the kite builds, look to your lesser linen" in reference to them stealing washing hung out to dry in the nesting season.[14] In the mid-15th century, King James II of Scotland decreed that they should be "killed wherever possible", but they remained protected in England and Wales for the next 100 years as they kept the streets free of carrion and rotting food.[15] Under Tudor "vermin laws" many creatures were seen as competitors for the produce of the countryside and bounties were paid by the parish for their carcasses.[16]


A sighting of the first red kite in London for 150 years was reported in The Independent newspaper in January 2006[23] and in June of that year, the UK-based Northern Kites Project reported that kites had bred in the Derwent Valley in and around Rowlands Gill, Tyne and Wear for the first time since the re-introduction.[24]

In 1999, the red kite was named 'Bird of the Century' by the British Trust for Ornithology.[14] According to the Welsh Kite Trust, it has been voted "Wales's favourite bird".[25]

 

[Mesquite]

They're great to watch and as I'm sat typing this I can hear 2 calling to each other as they soar over head

 

[Dave]

I saw a couple for the first time, last year, when fishing on the wharfe near burley in wharfedale, at dusk circling, fields opposite me, they were high but unmistakebly huge. They must have been the offspring of the pair at harewood house in Leeds. They were hunting though I think, not scavenging. The geese on the ground were almost sprinting off in fear at ground level, flying as low as possible, like frightened bunnies trying to get to cover.