Kites

One of the people I garden for was telling me that his son, visiting one day, pointed to the heavens and said, "Look, there's a red kite!"  His little daughter, all of six years old, fixed her father with a withering look and replied, "Daddy, you're just being silly.  Anyone can see that it's a bird!  There isn't a string!"

The red kite is the symbol of Powys, and has a reasonable claim to be a sort of alternative National Creature of Wales, I suppose, for all that introduced kites have become a common sight in the Thames Valley and other parts of Britain.  For many years you had to come to mid-Wales to see red kites - and even then, just to a handful of locations.  Nowadays they may be seen more frequently in this area, and, though I'm not sure that there are any breeding pairs this far from their ancient Welsh stronghold to the south, I've seen a pair flying together this year on two occasions at Marton, just over the Shropshire border, so it's possible.

The red kite has also appeared in our bird log for Brookfield Road, though it was a long way up, and certainly not a visitor to the local bird tables!  They are wonderful birds to see in flight, though, for they are so marvellously aerobatic.  I noticed a pair flying together over the Dyfi estuary on my way by car back from Aberystwyth the other day and, though I saw them for only a few instants, the number of twists and turns each bird managed in that short time was remarkable.

When it comes to that other sort of kite, the ones that have strings attached, I'm well out of my comfort zone.  Somehow they just don't work for me!  But anyway, I'd rather just watch these wonderful wild creatures, and marvel at their mastery of an element that is so beyond me.