Saturday 7 March 2015

A red kite sort of day

What a beautiful day!


I've spent the day out in the garden, doing a lot of pruning and tidying, but I wasn't alone. A robin followed me round, checking what I was up to and no doubt waiting for me to unearth something it could eat. Then one of the blue tits came and sat on the last buddleia stem (just before I chopped it off) and shouted at me. It seemed very cross that I'd cut it down and really told me off. The red kites were enjoying the sunshine and floated around overhead. They watch everything that's going on and were definitely keeping an eye on what I was doing.





 

I saw my first 2 brimstone butterflies of the year (or maybe I saw the same one twice). What a lovely, cheery sight!

The big job of the day was cutting our massive buddleia bush right back. I've left it all winter because the birds eat the seeds, but it needed cutting back.  Last year I left it and it flowered so early in the year that all the flowers had gone over before the butterflies were around. Hopefully this will delay the flowers this year!

I headed indoors for a much needed cup of tea and sat and watched the red kites out of the sitting room window. I suspect somebody was feeding them nearby because there were about a dozen kites circling round. I took these photos from the comfort of my armchair - not a bad view to enjoy with a cup of tea!


They fly right past the window - you can see the window frame in this photo


5 kites
7 kites

3 comments:

  1. Your red kite photographs are fantastic! I absolutely adore kites but see them so rarely it's a real treat to be able to read about them and see the pictures. It's also a relief that I'm not the only one who regularly gets shouted at by garden birds- I live near a blackbird which shouts whenever I have the audacity to look at it!

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  2. Thank you! I love the kites (you may have noticed) and we're very lucky to have so many of them around here. Love our little back garden birds as well though - they're such characters and make me laugh a lot.

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  3. good photos of the red kite. btw got my goshawk!

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