Breeding Frogs and Displaying Red Kites

While it was not planed that way, it was rather fortunate that my new toy arrived on the first day of spring. So far I have been able to get out each day with the video camera and I have got some interesting footage. However, it will take time before I can post anything here as I still need to get the software and cables to do that. However, getting out each day to explore with the camera is a pleasure.

While the camera is digital, I am learning its limitations and its abilities. On Sunday I went looking for the signs of breeding behaviour in the amphibians, and I found frog spawn. I used the camera to film the spawn and was really pleased that the macro facility really worked and worked well. Playing the footage back, I could see the frog developing inside the egg. I plan to try and return several times and observe the development. I must admit that I am fascinated by these really basic aspects of natural history, whenever I see something I just become a child again. There will be some folks that know me, that will attest to the fact that I have never grown up.

Then on Monday after getting an okay sequence as I was heading for home I spotted a pair of Bullfinches feeding and got some clear footage of them. Tuesday I popped out early, and while I didn't get what I was hoping to see, I had a long clear view of a Jackdaw preening.

But as I had other commitments, I had to head off and do all the boring stuff of life. However, when I got back from a supermarket run, if only the cat would buy her own food I could be saved that job, I still had time to get out for a wander.

Last year I witnessed a pair of the Red Kites trying to build a nest, they failed as it collapsed off the branch. Therefore I have been keeping up an observation to see if it happened again. Therefore I have been looking out for any activity that would indicate the Kites were pairing or nesting.

As the thinning work is going on at the moment in the woods, some paths and tracks are closed to the public. Therefore I have had to take longer circuitous routes to the various locations to observe. While in the thick of the wood I spotted one of the Kites. As I tried to make my way forward I realised that there was not one but three of them and they were circling. Then to my wonder and delight I realised there were four of them.

Had it not been the happy chance of the trees still being without leaf and all three appearing in the patches of open sky at the same time I may not have realised what I was seeing. I was one hundred yards of thick wood away from gaining a clear view but there were three males competing in a courtship flight for a single female. At one point two of the birds, one of the males and the female exchange food in an aerial pass, talon to talon. This is behaviour that I have only read of in books before and never witnessed. What an amazing sceptical, as one bird (the male) has to fly upside down, all be it briefly, to complete this feat in mid air.

I got a short, a few seconds long, of one of the kites though the trees, but after the female chose the male, they flew off before I could escape the thicket. Had it not been for the forest operations going on I would have tried following but the path I would have needed to take went straight to where heavy machinery was felling timber and as excited as I was I did not want to get into the path of a hundred foot spruce coming down.

The excitement of seeing something like that is amazing. It would have been great if I could have filmed it, but that was not to be this time at least. I don't care if people think that I am like a child at moments like this, as these experiences provide me with memories that are priceless.