More Red Kites

Spending a lot of time looking to the sky out of windows paid off yesterday with a Red Kite flying low over Colyton heading East, and Dad had another one today heading West. All of my Kite pics so far this year have been from half a mile away or more so here is a pic of one of the 60 ish patch Red Kites I saw last year:

Other patch news of interest:
A text from Ian Mc in the morning of Monday 7th said there was a Marsh Harrier over the estuary. I suspect that it was here from late afternoon on Sunday as there were two big flushes on the estuary about an hour apart from each other. I thought maybe it was a Red Kite with the first flush as there had been a couple already but after the 2nd flush I said to Dad (we were watching the Garganey) that the behaviour from the gulls was more typical of a Harrier type flush i.e. from the ground upwards rather than something flying overhead. We couldn't see what it was from where we were but it's likely that this was the Marsh Harrier that was reported the next day. No regrets missing it though; that Garganey was great to watch!

We've now got at least 8 Swifts back in Colyton. I wanted some pics of them but they have been feeding very high with the recent warm weather, although it looks as though that has now started to change for the colder!