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Kite


walshie
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I did see one when shooting at Hallgarth, Horncastle this last season so they are moving up and there are quite a few around Stamford.  We had a pair floating around here between Tamworth Staffs and Atherstone, Warwicks, but they seem to have moved on.  When I had stalking down near Marlborough they would swoop down really close to you in a hgih seat to have a look, almost touching distance.  Fantastic areo gymnasts.

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Whenever I start shooting locally the buzzards arrive as if they know that there will be a free meal around the edge of the field. When we walk the field at the end of the day you find some  pigeons stripped to the bone. Now the question is do they suffer from lead shot ??

They do not seem to decrease in numbers so I think not and we never find buzzard carcasses.

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On ‎20‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 13:33, philpotttt said:

Stunning birds, only wish we had a few in my neck of the woods. It's strange how the spread of birds of prey changes. We have loads of Buzzards which is a relatively new thing as you would never come across any ten years ago.

Good photo's from a phone.

 

Phil 

And in another ten years you will be wishing you had never seen one.   These raptors all have to feed on something.

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Red Kites are more common than seagulls round my way, literally.  There was a release programme locally some years back, and they have thrived ever since.  From high ground with binos if you scan around you'd see at least 10-20 in the air, all day every day guaranteed.  Someone in our village puts food out for them; A friend showed me a photo taken from his back bedroom window with over 40 kites circling and swooping down above another back garden along the road.  Buzzards have increased too, as far as I know without any human intervention, so generally speaking the world has become a better place for raptors in recent years

On 25/03/2018 at 09:47, Grandalf said:

And in another ten years you will be wishing you had never seen one.   These raptors all have to feed on something.

Let me give you my experiences and opinion.

We release ex-layers on our shoot, so obviously I know it will be different with poults.  As you'd expect within the first 2-3 weeks after release you get a few sick and stressed birds keel over (around the 5% mark).  Rarely do I find the carcasses untouched, they're normally emptied of the offal and sometimes a bit more thoroughly stripped.  Mostly buzzards but the kites do get involved as well.

After a month or so, what's going to die will have died.  I don't continue to find chewed up carcasses in the pen.  So are they mercilessly hunting my pheasants or just taking advantage of what's there?  Charlie takes a lot more throughout the year, and they are healthy birds.

The sparrowhawks had nearly all my partridge last year, and Charlie mopped up the remainder.

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its funny that a couple of you guys have mentioned about kites coming to have a look at you , its happened to me quite a few times , but , i thought that it was just my imagination. 

on one of the farms that ive been shooting for around 20 years , you would never see any signs of buzzards , until about ten years ago , these days its not uncommon to see a dozen of them all in the air together. kites also started to make an appearance around 3 years ago . i drove onto a freshly fertilized field last year , to find four buzzards and four kites working the field , it was very impressive.

around the piece of woodland that weve recently got , its quite common to see a kite working , with a buzzard sort of shadowing it , im not sure if this is normal behaviour , or even if its the same pair of birds.

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