Little Couch Visits: On the trail of growing Black-shouldered Kites

Added the “Couch” heading to my normal visits and journeys.  We are as it happens, at home on the couch, iPad in hand.

So come with me on a journey back in time. Shades of “Back to the Future —another couch-time activity.

We had been, in early Feb and March, working with a pair of Black-shouldered Kites at nest. The day the first lockdown took effect, the young had only just flown. And then we didn’t see them for over three weeks. By then they were well advanced.
It was a bit of a missed photographic opportunity as the nesting site lended itself both from great light and open areas, for some really clear shots of the birds as they began their life on the wing.

Time passed, and restrictions lifted and we went back to the usual haunt to see if they were still around.
No. Well gone.

A couple of weeks later we returned with Flame Robin arrivals in mind.
EE spotted way, way, way down the paddock—even for her— a flash of white in the sky and declared that the young kites were probably way down the fence-line in the distance.

Robins, or Kites?
We set out along the fence-line.
The mice population among the bracken must have been very good as all three quickly scored a meal while we were approaching.
They settled down in among some of the small trees to enjoy a feast.

Out of nowhere, Dad arrived on the scene and took station on one of the higher branches.  But rather than welcoming him, they harassed him for food.

However he wasn’t taking any orders. His Uberfood days were over.

The interesting thing that we noted was the colour change, each one was well into moulting the subtle grey and white and the ginger colours were being replaced.

I guess having some more time at home, I can work through the files and find some images, or sets that normally I’d just leave to mellow on the disk.  A  tweak here, a slider or two there, a brush on a mask there, and ‘hey presto’.

Enjoy

Remain.

The Doona Hermit.

They were down in a tree-line, and it took EE awhile to locate them
Perhaps pretending not to be there. It is starting to replace the juvenile feathers with the adult grey.
Easy to see how the grey adult feathers are moulting in
Dad dropped in to see how they were doing and immediately they all thought he should be hunting for them.
Fully able to look after themselves
Not a good idea to knock Dad off his perch
Feed me, feed me. That look on his face says that he is not hunting any more for them.
A Hunting We will Go
Hunting like the professional it has become

6 thoughts on “Little Couch Visits: On the trail of growing Black-shouldered Kites

  1. Good to see them fending for themselves, even if like kids of the human kind they still want Dad to feed them!
    Lovely images of them and the interaction!
    Can’t say I am not happy to be confined to quarters today, it is a tad chilly out there!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. A beautiful series of shots of the three kids and their Dad. It’s good you were able to see them through to being self-sufficient before the second lockdown shut us all back inside. I hope you can get out and about a bit.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Some awesome images of those Black shouldered Kites David, those young ones need to learn the hard way to survive, a very pretty BoP, cheers.

    Liked by 1 person

G'day, Please feel free to Leave a Reply. Now auto approved

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s