Somethings happen so fast that it defeats the human eye to follow. Sometimes a short sequence of photos can reveal not only fine details of an event but also an understanding of the forces at work.
Such, is the case of a pair of Black-shouldered Kites at work on their current nesting duties.
Our blog friend David Nice gave me the headsup that the Kites were back at work on the Sneydes Road area. Time for a looksee.
And indeed they were. The nest is quite a new site for the pair, and built in such a position that its a little hard to fly in nesting sticks directly, and the male has been ‘drifting’ them in at an angle to get the larger longer sticks in just the right position.
I normally don’t shoot multi-burst, but, well you know how it is, the first pair of kites we’ve worked with in quite awhile. So I was happy to begin to fillup the memory card.
Where the magic happened however was when I began to curate the images and found the various changes in wing angle and feather application that he was using to ‘drift’ into the right position.
So the series here are simply to show how he has used wing angle and wing lift to get the right momentum, direction and control. With one wing carrying the movement while the other wing lets air cascade away to ‘fall’ in that direction.
Hope you find in interesting.
His second problem is that the locals are not too impressed to have the new home renovators at work in their area, and each trip in and out was a to run the gauntlet of ravens, Red-wattle birds and magpies. A bit costly on feather contacts on a number of occasions.
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER - --doesn't mean I'm LOST 