Scavenger

After a sunny and springlike weekend, the first two days of March have been cold and overcast. Two days of plant recording also triggered a relapse of the viral fatigue that has affected me on and off since last May, so I've stayed close to home.

I tend to break up my time at the computer with short expeditions into the kitchen to see what the garden birds are up to. Just before lunch I noticed a crow noisily mobbing a red kite which was circling low over the garden. There was a  mob of seagulls in a neighbours garden, so I guessed the kite was hoping to scavenge a meaty scrap. It spent quite a long time lazily looping round, and eventually went down and picked up a morsel in its talons, which it ate while on the wing. At times it was so low that I couldn't get the whole bird in the the frame, but a bit of decent light would have been handy!