Scotland Visit Day 1 : Lerrocks Farm : 8th September 2011
The main reason that we had decided to stay in Stirling was to attend the Red Kite feeding at Lerrocks Farm in Doune, Stirlingshire. We had gone to RSPB Inversnaid, on the banks of Loch Lomond, in the morning but we had to leave earlier than we had hoped because, although it was not a great distance From Inversnaid to Doune, the roads were rough and narrow and very slow so we only just made it for the main event of our day which was the 2.30pm start for the 3pm feeding.
As it happens we drove into the car park at 2.28pm so we only just made it. We were told by the local ranger that we should walk up to the hide whilst he drove round to put out the feed. He wasn’t actually able to give us as talk but there was a volunteer who was well informed and who gave us the background whilst we awaited the arrival of the Kites. The feed is apparantly bits of offcuts from the local butcher mainly the grisly bits from deer and other carrion. Of course this is just the ticket for Red Kites but it also drew a small flock of Carrion Crows and even an adventurous Grey Heron who relished the free meal.
At first a single Red Kite turned up and took up position at the top of a tree in the nearby woods. Later another joined it but the views were not brilliant as the trees were quite a way off. We did not know quite what to expect. They say that in winter there can be hundreds of them but at other times of year it all depends on how much food they have found in the wild. It was perhaps half an hour later when we started to see one or two birds in the sky and then three or four and then eventually one of the Ked Kites swooped down to pick up a morsel. In general Red Kites prefer not to land on the ground and their preferred method of feeding is to swoop down, to put their feet together in front of their bodies and snatch some food before soaring back up into the air. When the first bird came down it was a signal to others to join in until there were were Kites everywhere with the Crows and the Heron trying to dodge them and still get some food themselves.
It was not really possible to say how many birds were involved but we estimated between us that we could see a maximum of seventeen Red Kites at the one time. This would surely mean that there were probably a couple of dozen. This may sound like small beer compared to the gigantic numbers seen in winter but it was a very satisfying experience itself and at times it was hard to keep up with the action of even this number of birds. I had taken a monopod and my Nikon D300 camera with a Nikkor 500mm lens and teleconverter and I tried to keep up with the action but the birds were so fast that my best plan of action was to try to focus on the food on the ground and shoot as many frames as possible when any birds came down. By the time that a bird came into the viewfinder and the shutter was pressed the bird had already gone out of frame so I decided to try to keep the camera focused on the spot and not to look through the viewfinder but use the general view as a cue to fire off a few shots as I saw birds swoop. This meant that there were a lot of empty shots and lots of out of focus shots or ones where the bird was sharp but only half in the frame. Additionally the fact that they were all tagged on both wings with very large id numbers in bright colours meant that lots of shots were not that aesthetically pleasing. I did manage to get some shots that were reasonably in focus so although I was a bit disappointed with my performance it wasn’t a total wash-out. Of course, from a strictly birding viewpoint rather than a photography point of view it was absolutely brilliant and well worth the visit. It would be good to pay a visit in winter and because it is reasonable near Stirling that is a possibility in the future.