Drifting

I nipped up to the owl field early, arriving to lovely light but no owls. On the plus side, as I wandered around the perimeter of the field I spotted a Lesser Redpoll - a bird I'd never seen on the scarp before - but it was rummaging for food among dead stems in the most overgrown part of the hedgerow, so my photos of it weren't very appealing. By the time I left a couple of hours later, because R and I had an appointment to meet R's cousin and his wife for lunch in Broadway, the weather had done one of those sudden, almost Icelandic turnabouts you get at that altitude, and it was raining horizontally under a grimly glowering sky. By then a few other people had arrived, so I hope that the weather turned again after I'd left and allowed the owls to come out for them - but I can't say that the situation looked too promising.

I caught this Red Kite above Guiting Power on my way towards the owl field. I always slow down and check the valley for raptors as I drop down the hill beside Guiting Grange, but today I couldn't immediately see anything flying. Happily though, fortune favoured the well-mannered, and when I paused in a field gateway to let a van pass me on the single-track road, this one suddenly floated into view from behind a stand of trees. It's not my best ever Red Kite portrait, but on a day of slim pickings (bird-wise that is: lunch-wise I ate myself to a complete standstill) it's easily the photo of the day.