Ok, this isn't parrot or pet related but I thought it might be of interest to some of you. It's an interesting success story as far as conservation goes and a great experience for an amateur photographer...
For those of you outside of Europe, red kites are our equivalent of turkey vultures: large soaring birds that primarily clean up carrion. Unfortunately in the UK a few hundred years of shooting, poisoning and habitat destruction pretty much drove the species out of the country and by the 1980s there were less than 20 surviving birds living in a colony in the middle of Wales.
At that point a group of local farmers began a campaign to protect them, laying out fresh meat so that the birds were guaranteed healthy food and would remain in an area they were safe from shotguns. Pretty soon the mid-Wales population was flourishing and the rescue effort inspired other projects to reintroduce the species elsewhere in the country. Today there are several thousand of them in the UK.
One of those original Welsh farmers eventually turned his kite feeding into a tourist attraction where you can watch from a hide whilst the birds come in for their dinner. It attracts over 100 birds including kites, buzzards, ravens and rooks and it must be one of the most spectacular things you can see in the bird world. I went over there this week with my camera and took these:
For those of you outside of Europe, red kites are our equivalent of turkey vultures: large soaring birds that primarily clean up carrion. Unfortunately in the UK a few hundred years of shooting, poisoning and habitat destruction pretty much drove the species out of the country and by the 1980s there were less than 20 surviving birds living in a colony in the middle of Wales.
At that point a group of local farmers began a campaign to protect them, laying out fresh meat so that the birds were guaranteed healthy food and would remain in an area they were safe from shotguns. Pretty soon the mid-Wales population was flourishing and the rescue effort inspired other projects to reintroduce the species elsewhere in the country. Today there are several thousand of them in the UK.
One of those original Welsh farmers eventually turned his kite feeding into a tourist attraction where you can watch from a hide whilst the birds come in for their dinner. It attracts over 100 birds including kites, buzzards, ravens and rooks and it must be one of the most spectacular things you can see in the bird world. I went over there this week with my camera and took these:
