Far Pastures

 29.02.24 I’ve been out of fettle for a while so I haven’t been out with the camera as much as I would have liked. On one of the few occasions I have been out I was lucky enough to catch Red Kite H5 gathering what, hopefully, turns out to be nesting material. There were three Kites Flying around the horse field so fingers crossed.

H5 with what I hope turns out to be nesting material.

He was constantly passing it from his beak to his talons.

One of the other Red Kites this one has what looks like a satellite tag on its back.

Male Kestrel.

Female Roe Deer.

Male Roe Deer.

There were three in the field however I only managed to get an image of two of them.

Willow Tit

Siskin.

Blue Tit.

Magpie hitching a ride on one of the many Shetland Ponies in the field.

Far Pastures

 12.02.24 yet another failed trip to Far Pastures for the Firecrest but as I said in my last Blog there is nearly always something to see.

A couple of Buzzard were over the fields.

As were a couple of Red Kite including H5 again,

The Kestrel was keeping an eye on things.

Siskin around the feeders.

Long-tailed Tit were also around the feeders.

Nuthatch along the lane.

A couple of Roe Deer were strolling through the wood.

H5

 24.01.24 Before I went to Burdon Moor on the 24^th I had a drive to Far Pastures. There wasn’t a lot around but as I was driving up the lane to the main road there were a couple of Red Kites flying over the field to my right so I pulled over to the side of the road to see if I could get some shots of them. One was H5 the other was not tagged. H5 is, according to The Friends of Red Kites web site, a ten-year-old male and was fledged in Sunniside. As he came closer, I noticed he had something in his talons and it wasn’t something you see everyday (although if you live in Rowlands Gill, it probably is) it was what looked like a piece of pork belly. He landed on a telegraph pole and he started to eat his meal. Now unfortunately, in my opinion there are a couple of things wrong with these images one there isn’t a blue sky and two the choice of where H5 decided to land to eat his bait however you can only photograph what’s in front of you at the time so I shouldn’t complain too much.

He had a couple of goes at trying to land with his pork belly.

On the second attempt he succeeded.

Another Kite was still flying around and H5 was warning it off.

I think he was trying to tell me to keep my distance too.

He was eating the pork belly

But kept getting blown about by the wind.

The untagged Kite was still flying around

So H5 tried to down the rest of the pork belly in one.

He didn’t manage it 

But was still warning the other one to keep off.

Eventually he flew off with the left overs.

While still telling the other Kite to keep off.