On a fine sunny morning, we made a trip out to see how the Happy Couple from my last post were progressing.

They were both on a roost tree and preening in the sunshine.
It was a great opportunity to see some slight differences in their colouring.
The male (?) seems to now have lost his former brown tan colours. Both of them still have a shade of brown for the eye colouring.

We’ve been guessing about how old they might be, but at best they were from the January clutches, so we are looking at birds around 5-6 months old at best.
She (?) still carries some tinges of juvenile colour in her wing feathers, and that can be seen in the diptych below.
They both seem to hunt together, and there is occasionally a bit of an aerial battle with talons up, and lots of hoarse calling. But they both return to perch and seem to be at ease wth one another.

Until. And this is where anthropomorphology takes over for a little.
He caught a mouse, and was seemingly intent on bringing it to enjoy his meal.
She on the other hand, made a decision that the mouse was in fact for her and a heated chase began across the paddock.

Two conclusions were possible. She might be far enough advanced to want him to begin to feed her for a possible clutch, (even if its not going to happen, she might have the idea, that he should be feeding) He, for his part is still a young bird and the gene pool has yet to release the necessary action needed for him to understand that for the relationship, he needs to provide for her while she sits eggs.

Either way. He had no intention of giving up the mouse and in the end ducked into a very thick tree where she decided not to follow. He didn’t come out again with the mouse, so no doubt polished it off at his leisure.

No doubt there are other Black-shouldered Kite explanations that could account for all this. In the meantime we’ll sit and enjoy their antics.