It’s amazing to see how gentle this red kite is as she feeds her chicks. Her young are just days old and she is so tender as she breaks off bits of food and offers it to them.
Red kite nest
I built a hide on a tower of scaffolding opposite a 15m high larch tree and watched from the moment the pair prepared the nest for a new season.
Decorated with our rubbish
Red kites are known to collect discarded fabric to decorate their nests with. In this film you can see they also pick up rubbish – I even spotted a Covid mask in there! I’ve read that the more dominant the pair, the more they like to show off with things they’ve scavenged – so perhaps this pair were particularly strong!
Red kite once rare
Red kites were an extremely rare sight in the UK when I was growing up. There were just a handful of pairs left in the whole country and not a bird you could see here in Yorkshire.
Fighting extinction
But in the last decade these beautiful birds have made an extraordinary comeback and now there is a healthy population right here. You can’t imagine how exciting it is not only to see them soaring the skies above my art gallery, but to actually be able to watch a pair at their nest.