Kite soup

Today we took the visiting mother-in-law to see the Red Kites being fed at Gigrin Farm near Rhayader, Powys.  It's about a decade since I was here last to see this spectacle.  These are not tame kites - they are totally wild, but the supplementary feeding they get here every day helps to insulate them against hard winters and inclement summer.  Kites are scavengers, mainly feeding on carrion - they come from up to 40 miles away, at the same time each day, to be treated to a trailer-load of meat.  On an average day there will be 200-300 kites - 400 or more when there's snow on the ground, making it harder for them to find food for themselves.  

Kites are such a conservation success story.  When I was a student in West Wales in the late 1980s, there were just a few pairs living up near Llyn Brianne in the Cambrian Mountains, and despite many trips I was never lucky enough to see them.  Now, from being perilously close to extinction in the UK, they are widespread across Wales and the south of England - when I lived in Norfolk a couple of years back we had a roost in some trees behind the house, with as many resident kites as there had been in the whole of Wales when I was a student!  I've seen them as far down as Wellington in Somerset, and as far east as Holt in Norfolk.  But however often I see red kites, it always makes my heart lift.  And a couple of hundred of them whistling and swooping a few metres from your hide is a truly amazing experience.  Mostly I just watched, drinking it in rather than experiencing it second-hand via the camera.  But I did take a few photographs, and I was quite chuffed with the silhouettes.