Day 39 - Red Kites at Gigrin Farm

First a bit of background for my more distant readers.  Red kites virtually died out in Britain by the end of the 19th century but a few pairs remained in Wales.  In recent years great efforts have been made to protect and conserve them including the setting up of some registered supplemental feeding centres.  Gigrin farm is one of these, at Rhayader and, as well as feeding the birds with large quantities of fresh meat it also caters for photographers and bird watchers with hides set up adjacent to the feeding ground.  This is where we went today.  


It's our third attempt in 3 months as we were beaten back by fog on previous occasions.  These are beautiful birds and very fast! I took hundreds of photos but a lot were blurry or only contained half a bird in the frame!  I particularly wanted to get a shot of a bird swooping down to pick the meat of the ground & set up the camera on the tripod focussed on one lump of meat.  In the hour and a half we were there only one bird went for the right bit of meat and I missed it. Most of the bit I'd focussed on was still there when we left. Frustrating. Anyway here's todays photo






































and as usual a couple of extras.  The birds pick up the food with their talons and then eat it on the wing, as this one is doing

The white bird, facing up to the buzzard is a rare white variety known as a leucistic red kite.  They're not albino as they have pale colouring & blue eyes.  Their survival rate is poor in the wild but this one is doing ok with the feeding on the farm