Whilst Sunday appeared grey, overcast and generally pretty horrid, staying at home was fairly boring! So, upon looking through various touristy leaflets, we decided on a visit to a local zoo park. Now this isn’t necessarily first on the list, but is quite a nice place to spend a grey, wet Sunday afternoon. I was to be pleasantly surprised.
We mosied round the obligatory sleeping tigers and excitable lemurs and then into the bird section. The exotic creatures on show captivated all the children around us. However, I think that I then turned into the most excited person in park! ‘Look, look, look’ I shouted with all the excitement of a child looking at the tigers. I, however, was not pointing into the cages but into the sky. For what I had seen doesn’t live in Zoos, and a few years ago didn’t even live in England. A red kite! The beautiful, majestic red kite.
This master flyer soared over the park, dipping and diving before one flap of those powerful wings took it forward. I watched, astounded. When I was young, I remember being taken to dark, wet (they are always wet in my mind!) Welsh valleys and woodland in search of this rare, mystic almost, fork-tailed bird. Yet now here I was, staring at one merely half an hour from my home, in the fens of Cambridgeshire! It really is the most awesome of sights.
All the exotic beasts in the Zoo were second to this, a wild red kite in England. A huge smile was on my face, in fact it’s still there!
For more on our science, check out the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science web pages.