Tag Archives: Red Kites

Serenity Lost

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Sunset over Basford, Nottingham

We had a good afternoon yesterday, eating chocolate brownies in our new kitchen and chatting with my sister as I looked out of the window and watched a red kite overhead. I’m still amazed by this. They were almost extinct in Wales when I was a kid, and non-existent in England and Scotland. We also saw magpies. They are less amazing – you never saw them in the eastern counties when I was a kid, but there were plenty in Lancashire when we went north to see family. The same was true of buzzards. Over the last twenty or thirty years both species have managed to spread into parts of the UK where you never used to see them.

In some ways, this is good to see. They are both interesting species and the expansion of the buzzard suggests that nature is restoring itself after the insecticide problems of the 1960s. On the other hand, the magpies are one of the factors in the reduction in garden bird species. Having said that, there are a lot of other reasons for the problems with garden birds, including garden chemicals and viruses. Cats have been blamed too, but we always had plenty of garden birds despite having two cats.

Sunset over Sherwood

It used to be nice to go north. First the magpies would start, then possibly a buzzard, and finally, as we got onto the moors, they cry of the curlew.  Now magpies and buzzards are commonplace, there is no longer any excitement about seeing them, and there is real sadness that the curlew is hardly ever heard these days. Kites, on the other hand, having been reintroduced in parts of Yorkshire, are very common on part of the journey.

Unfortunately, the mood didn’t last. Today I had an email from the solicitor. I had emailed them a few days ago to give them a gentle nudge and was not impressed by the contents of their reply. They now require sight of certified copies of two documents relating the the deaths of my parents. They must have seen these several times already in the work they have done for us (but then they still needed to see ID for me despite having seen it on numerous occasions over the last few years. They had not, at any time, asked to see these documents when we started the transfer, so I’m not sure why they have suddenly become necessary. They also want to see copies of my bank statements. But they have already seen copies of my bank statements, and didn’t query them at the time.

Strange how a feeling of serene well-being can be so abruptly and completely brought to nothing by something as simple as a few words and an injection of high-priced inefficiency.

Sunset over Screveton

Time for a Change of Pace

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Here’s a Tanka prose from a while back. I thought it was time for a more relaxed posting. It’s tempting, after my recent reading of a book of poetry criticism, to write about the poem. But I won’t, because it won’t improve anything.

This was first published in Ribbons, in Winter 2023.

The Shadow of the Red Kite

Simon Wilson, Nottingham, UK

The autumn sun warms my back as we sit in the old stable yard. My wife outlines her plans for the day and I run my fingers over the grain in the silvery surface of the weathered tearoom table. Our tea and bara brith arrive. Translated from the Welsh, bara brith means speckled bread, referring to the dried fruit that is its most noticeable feature.

Three wasps also arrive. Two fly away as my wife flaps her hand at them, but one lands on the table and stalks my food. It hauls itself over the rim and begins to gorge on the juicy centre of a raisin. My wife tells me to chase it off but I don’t have the heart. It is September and soon it will die. I can spare a little dried fruit for a fellow struggler.

She breaks off the conversation and points over my shoulder. I turn to see the distinctive silhouette of a Red Kite overhead. When I was a child, it was a very rare bird in the UK, and survived only in Wales. I remember the combined thrill and disappointment I experienced on a family holiday when I was ten years old–the profile and the flash of red that denoted a kite, but at a distance so great I could hardly see it, and never quite believed I had seen one.

kites in the sky
and mist on the mountains
with you beside me
if this is all life is
it is enough

 

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm

Chips, Kites and Memories

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Today we drove down to Peterborough and met my sister in Dobbie’s Garden Centre. It’s one of those big modern centres, which is more groceries and giftware than actual gardening stuff, but they do a great fish & chips.

The actual ordering system is a little chaotic and features those buzzing things that are very popular these days. Not as popular with me as actually having a member of staff bring to food to the table, but still popular. The chips are large and well cooked with great tartare sauce. The first was succulent and the mushy peas were good. The bread was a nice seeded variety, though the presentation – two slices thrown on a plate with two butter pats, was not quite as well served as the elegant triangular slices shown on the picture.

All in all it was a very good meal and one that reveals how times have changed. A couple of years ago this was the garden centre we stopped at to have tea and cake on our way back from Suffolk in the week lock-down was announced. There ere only a handful of people there that day and we were unable to see my father as the nursing home had already gone into lockdown. Things did not work out too well.

I really must start taking the camera around with me.

After we finished, we saw a red kite over the car park, a really good sighting at low altitude. Mt sister tells me that as the population increases they are taking more live food as their is not enough carrion around, a problem increased by the spread of buzzards into the area. On the way home via the scenic route, we saw another dozen buzzards, one of which was even closer than the car park bird.

On returning home, I found I had an email accepting more poems and we had beans on toast to make up for the calories ingested at lunch.

In summary,

Red Kites

it was an excellent day and a joy to be out, despite the sad memories.

The Red Kites are from our visit to Wales in 2017. 2017? Time flies.

The Kites

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As you know, we went to Gigrin Farm last week to watch the Kite feeding. It was quite an experience. It seems to be quite a popular thing to do, as there are two other sites who feed kites – one at Llanddeusant and another at Bwlch Nant yr Arian. They may not all offer the number of kites seen at Gigrin, but even 50 kites are a majestic sight.

The growth from a couple of pairs in the 1950s is an epic story. In the rest of the UK they have done it by importing stock from Spain, Sweden and Germany, but in Wales they have done it all by improving the environment. The fact that Buzzards (another big, lazy predator) has recently done well suggests that things are working with the birds (lack of gamekeepers and plenty of rabbits being big factors).

Their predilection for dead prey does help – you can’t imagine Goshawks and Peregrines coming down for a scoop of ground beef.

Things are going so well we are actually using our own Kites to repopulate the UK and have actually sent some back to Europe.

The only place they aren’t doing well is the north of Scotland, a heavily keepered area. You may draw your own conclusions. You  might also want to look here for reports of crimes against Kites and other raptors.

But on a more positive note, have a look at the photos and imagine the loud claps as they strike wings with their neighbours. If you are lucky you can even see the two birds falling from the sky after colliding. Unfortunately I couldn’t catch it on film.

There are other birds on the farm too. What you don’t see is that it then doubled back to have another go at the reflection. I’m not sure it’s good for the mental health of the peacock but it seemed reasonably happy.

Later I will do a post with some photos.