John & Maria's Photography Pages

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm

Red kite in flight

A few days away in September last year gave Maria and I the opportunity visit Gigrin Farm, near Welshpool in Wales.  The farm is a feeding station for Red Kites, Milvus milvus, a UK bird of prey that had almost disappeared.  By providing supplementary feeding to a few of the remaining kites, initially at Gigrin, and, later, other locations, the populations have increased dramatically and they are now a far more common sight away from their mid Wales stronghold.

Gigrin provides a wonderful opportunity to see these graceful birds en masse.  Feeding starts daily at 3:00pm during the summer months, on a meadow surrounded by an arc of hides.  The birds know this and they start to circle overhead up to an hour beforehand, increasing in numbers as feeding time approaches.  The sky can get crowded as feeding time approaches!

At the time my longest lens was the Olympus 70-300mm f4-5.6.  Lightweight, with a good deal of reach for its small size, I soon found it wasn't really fast enough to acquire focus on these circling birds.  Out came the 40-150mm F2.8 PRO + 1.4x teleconverter and that stayed on the OM-1 throughout.  Bird detect on, of course.  I started getting better shots of individual circling birds though even here I've had to crop.

ISO 800, f4, 210mm, 1/3200 sec

Finally, at 3:00PM prompt the tractor with chopped meat arrived and distribution could begin.

It should be emphasised that these are wild birds, opportunistic scavengers by nature, and always on the look out for carrion.  Gigrin farm merely provides them with some supplemental feeding.  In return they provide a spectacle.

On cue, the first birds swoop down to grab a morsel, rapidly followed by a constant stream as more and more flock in to feed, individual birds jostling for position.

       

At times it's actually difficult to lock focus on an individual bird.  There are too many for the bird detection to settle on one and keep tracking.  But no system is perfect and I got enough good shots to have a selection.

In general the 40-150mm + 1.4x was a good choice.  The birds were close and I often didn't need the full 210mm to get a shot.  I did make one mistake.  It was raining.  Light rain but dull light and I should have taken the ISO up from my 800 setting to 1600 or more to get better sharpness for the in flight shots.  1/1250sec isn't really enough.

Examined at 100% both the above shots are lacking a little in critical sharpness around the wingtips - though still good enough to put on sale.  Every shoot is a learning experience.

A thoroughly enjoyable day for both of us and one I'd heartily recommend to even non bird watchers.  Though, hopefully, you'll have better weather and light.