Gigrin Farm

At the weekend, I went to the wedding of my good friend the Rt. Rev. Ross Manning in Wales. While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit the Red Kite feeding station at Gigrin Farm.

They have special photography hides there, which have enough space to set up a tripod and swing a 500mm around in. If you are visiting and would like to use one of these, you'll need to book in advance (the photo hides were all full when we there there!). We didn't book in advance though (it was all a bit impromptu), so we just went into one of the normal hides. This was fine though (and cheaper - £4 per head instead of £20). I had to hand hold the 500mm which made my arms ache after a bit, but it was good enough.

Unfortunately, the weather was not good - a blanket of dull gray cloud, with the odd shower. I ended up with quite a lot of shots of Red Kites against a boring grey sky, and it was all a bit flat. As feeding time is 2pm in the winter, I expect the best time to go for photography would be a clear day in November/December (if such a thing exists in that part of the world!).

Anyway, I've never seen so many BoP! There were literally hundreds of Red Kites, something that doesn't really come across in the shots I got (which are mainly shots of individual birds).

Finally, here's something unusual - a leucistic Red Kite!