One of my neighbours puts out leftover cooked chicken onto the garden. This explains the preponderance of Red Kites in the area on a regular basis.
Having faced near extinction, they can be found in plenty of places such as the Beaconsfield / Wycombe area of the M40. I think that they are beautiful birds with their forked tails and colouring and have been trying to photograph them as they circle the house.
I daren't send my Drone up as, if it was to come into contact, it would come second and the kite may also end up an injured first. Instead, I've been trying to capture them with my trusty Nikon and a zoom lens.
And the results have been rubbish.
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| This is the best so far.. At least you can tell it's a kite |
Similar practice efforts of seagulls at the seaside have produced similar results.
Last week, however, I was in London. Whilst half my family were at a meeting, I and my daughter had an hour and a bit to kill so we decided to walk around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It was sunny, but breezy and we were armed with a bag of bread.
Arm-breaking swans notwithstanding (A Brucie Bonus to anyone who actually knows someone who has had their arm broken), she lined them up and I shot them down. Or rather she lobbed a microscopically small morsel of bread into the air and immediately we were flashmobbed by ducks, coots, pigeons and other birds (plus the aforementioned swans). It was so easy to click away, catching birds in flight, cruising and synchronised dive-bombing. Once the scene had transformed itself into a remake of The Birds we moved on and tried again.
Anyway, whilst not spectacular, I did managed to capture a fair few in flight and, due to sheer statistics, some of those came out well by my standards.
So, the moral is, if you want to practice capturing birds in flight, get the odds in your favour, find somewhere with lots, then bribe them to fly towards you. Even better, give your 8-year old the bread, stand back and prepare for incoming.
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