Red Kite - Seen From Our Back Door - Awesome

Thursday 26th March 2015

I can't begin to explain how exciting my morning was today!  I was on the exercise bike, which looks out of our back door - you've got to have something to look at, after all it's a pretty boring part of my day, and it provides a welcome breeze (or freezing draught in the middle of winter!) Anyway, pedalling along nicely and building up a bit of a sweat, I saw a bird of prey and as usual assumed it was a buzzard as we do see these above the garden from time to time, especially in the summer.  I very quickly realised this was no buzzard and abandoned the bike (no real excuse needed) to get a better look, flying low across the rooftops was a red kite, definitely a red kite because I had a fantastic view of it and saw the distinctive v shaped tail, it's brown/reddish colour and the stripes under it's wings.  

At that moment I thought no-one's going to believe me when I tell them what I've seen but by the time I got back with the camera it had disappeared.  I spent the rest of the day looking out and up at the sky but I think I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time - good old exercise bike! (never thought I would hear myself saying those few words).  

I got out the bird books just to confirm what I thought, and there is no doubt about it, it was a red kite.  Last year I saw red kites for the first time in the wild in the New Forest and at Farley Mount, so I suppose they are fairly local but to see one from home is just awesome - a word that Google seems to use a great deal but really it was.  Amazing.  Although we live on a smallish estate we are less than quarter of a mile from open farmland and woodland, so hopefully ideal for red kites.

Having read up about these kites, they are nest building at the end of March in deciduous trees, so I am hoping maybe it will hang around.  It also said 'birds, and particularly young of the year, often wander in autumn and winter, turning up in some unlikely places', but as it's now spring I am choosing to ignore that particular statement!

For details about red kites, see the RSPB details here