Sunday 9 January 2011

Gigrin Farm – 8th January, 2011 - Census Day 2

This visit to Gigrin Farm coincided with the first co-ordinated count of kites at all the known feeding stations in Wales.

I arrived early (1o’clock), expecting see dozens of kites perched like candles on a Christmas tree whilst awaiting the arrival of the food. How wrong I was. In fact there were two or three hundred already on the wing floating like leaves in the breeze to the north of the feeding area.

Before the food was distributed I was joined by Tony Cross with the numbers of birds having increased to about three hundred and fifty.

At 2.00pm Chris Powell delivered to the food to the feeding where numbers of expectant kites had increased to between four hundred and fifty and five hundred birds all converged in and around the feeding area swooping down to the ground to take a morsel of meat. Tony will hopefully have a more detailed count of the numbers present when he examines the series of rapid fire photographs he had taken.

We took the opportunity to record the wing tagged birds present and the details are below:-

Black/Blue: H1; 57; 68;

Black/black: a; H4; JO; 93; 77;

Black/yellow: 12;

Black/orange: 29; 51;

Black/purple: V3; 53;

Black/Green: L;

Also present in addition to the leucistic Black/Orange 51 there was the even paler untagged bird.

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