Blogs

As I’ve talked about in previous blogs, Phoenix the kite is quite the traveller.  She was one of the first birds collected for the project in the Chilterns in June of last year and brought to Aberdeen with 14 other kites.  She was named by one of the volunteers from Aberdeen Countryside Project that built the cages in spring.  Phoenix was wingtagged (07) and had a radio transmitter attached in early-July and was released on 17 July.  Since then she’s got even more air miles under her belt.  During fine weather in September several of the Aberdeen red kites dispersed from the area and during an aerial survey of the region we re-located a couple of the birds, including Phoenix.  She was near Nethy Bridge with another bird. 

Since October, Phoenix has made the journey to and from Nethy Bridge three times!  The 120 mile round trip goes across some of the highest ground in Grampian, and isn’t an easy jaunt for our young female.  At the moment she is with the main flock near Aberdeen, but when the weather clears on the higher ground I imagine she’ll be off again!  If you see Phoenix, or any other of the Aberdeen Red Kites, we would love to hear about it.  Please email us at aberdeenredkites@rspb.org.uk

After last month's winter movements blog, the kites have surprised us all again with another set of exciting movements across Scotland.  07 Phoenix returned from Nethy Bridge to Aberdeen for a couple of days, before heading off once again and at the moment we are not sure to where.  The Kingswells Bullet 27 has also been on the move again, and came back to Aberdeen in time for Christmas. 
 
So now in late-January, while the rest of us are fighting off the festive flab, the kites are continuing their winter routine of searching for worms and invertebrates combined with scavenging from the local pheasant shoot.  They seem to manage to scare off the local crows and buzzards to find enough to eat, and even fed well during the snow we had last week.
 
As the days begin to get longer myself and the other kite trackers continue to listen on the radio for our birds and the other Scottish missing kites.  Who knows who'll turn up in Aberdeen and which kites will head off from here.