It’s a Red Kite tornado
Since getting started in my wildlife photography back in February last year, I have had a list of places that I have wanted to visit, and Gigrin Farm, the Red Kite feeding centre in Rhayader has been near the top. Just after Christmas, I received a message from fellow Youtuber and photographer, Ashley Barnard, who you may know as Wildlife Photographer UK asking if I wanted to do a collaboration with him, and we decided that Gigrin would be a great place to meet up.
We met at the farm on a very cold day at the beginning of January about an hour or so before the feeding was going to take place, that way we could film a quick chat before heading out to our chosen hide for the session, which would be the Tower Hide.
For me, as someone who is still pretty new to wildlife photography, it was great to be talking to someone with much more experience than me, and I picked up quite a few ideas from Ash as to how I could better my field craft to (hopefully) find more wildlife. For example, last year Ash watched a pair of dippers flying upriver with nesting material in one direction and so moved further up the river to a point where they were no longer passing, laden with material and managed to work out where abouts the nest site was. A book he mentioned that has recently helped him was Simon King’s Nature Watch (I ordered a copy pretty much straight after I got home), which goes over how to conceal yourself from the wildlife as well as how to find a whole array of animal species here in the UK.
As we chatted the kites were really beginning to gather, there were hundreds of them circling overhead and calling, which was just magical to see. The weather for us was also looking good now, with a mix of beautiful winter sunshine along with the odd light snow flurry.
The feeding was to begin at 2pm, so we headed over to the Tower Hide, about 1:30pm ish to get our bearings and set up our equipment, with more and more kites gathering overhead. The tower hide is as described and though it isn’t the tallest hide on site, it is the most central and would give us a great opportunity to capture images of these beautiful birds in flight.
The tractor with all the food then headed our way and the excitement really began, with just a mass of kites all diving in to get their share of the food. This was just jaw dropping to see, as well as a bit intimidating and overwhelming, it was like a Red Kite tornado was just in front of us.
I found this first part of the feeding and photography session really hard, and just didn’t know where to even point my camera, and I pretty much froze up. Eventually I managed to pull myself together and with the help of spotting the rare leucistic red kite, which gave me something to focus on as it stood out from all the others.
Leucism, is an abnormal colouration that affects many different species and is attributed to a lack of melanin pigment, which would usually give the animal it’s colouring. The lack of this melanin causes the sink, fur or plumage to be lighter in colour and the animal usually appears white, or with white patches. (You can see more information on leucism in this article)
I was really hitting my stride now, and I got some really great images of this majestic bird. Once I had some images in the bag as it were, I was able to focus my attention on the other birds, knowing that I had already got some good images. We were fortunate to have a half moon out and again, that was something that I could focus on, trying to get an image with the kites in front of it.
After the main event of the feeding was over, some of the birds departed, though there were still lots, flying around looking for any scraps that may have been left. This gave us a quick opportunity to check our image count, I thought that I was doing well with 87 images in such a short amount of time, however Ash had over 700 at this point.
My own shooting style is quite slow and methodical, from my background in photographing mountain bikers and then having to edit and release photos the same day, I have got quite a good system for that, and can generally guess where the rider will be and take my image at the peak action for that feature, and so I take one image at a time (even though I am on the Hi+ setting on the Sony A7iv). For me, I like this way of shooting, as it means I have fewer images to try and sort though at the end of the day, and it also meant I wasn’t getting too overwhelmed when photographing the kites. However, I do see the downside to this, I can miss those ‘in-between’ images where the killer photo could be, and also, I am unable to piece together a sequence of images, which is what Ash did with some of his images, and it looks brilliant. I do think that you have to find your own rhythm in your photography and while I will try and push myself to hold that shutter down for longer, I do quite like to challenge myself with the one-shot method I have adopted.
As the main feeding was done, and things had quietened down, I was more settled with my photographing. Some of the kites were coming into land and pick up any scraps they could find on the ground (along with a lot of crows), and a few were still circling overhead.
We then had a bit of a snow flurry, and I captured one of my favourite images, of a pair of kites flying together.
There was quite a bit of play going on now, as the sun came back out for the last few minutes of our trip. This was incredibly hard to capture on camera, as the birds were very far away, and also moved like the clappers and would swoop and change direction in an instant.
With the weather getting colder, and a long drive home, we called it a day just before 4 and headed back to the cars. I had such an amazing time out with Ash at Gigirin Farm, and it is definitely a place I will be visiting again in the future. Being out with another photographer was also really fun, getting to chat all things cameras, and bounce ideas off each other as well as learn some really useful information, that I can use going forward in my wildlife photography.
Ash has also made a video about our trip to Gigrin that you can watch over on his YouTube channel, and see all his amazing images.