Red Kites are part of the raptor family, such as harriers, buzzards and eagles. Raptors have very sharp hooked beaks, which are designed for tearing meat, and talons which they use to catch and hold their prey. I am lucky enough to be too big for their prey, as they tend to eat beetles, earthworms and prefer Carrion, which my Human tells me is the decaying flesh of dead animals. Eeewww gross.
But I guess everything has to eat. So they usually look for small animals killed on the road, or steal meals from other birds. They have adopted the practice of following tractors which are cultivating the fields. They are looking for worms and small mammals which have been unearthed and possibly killed by the machinery. They can manage to catch and kill small Mammals, but due to their weak claws can’t manage anything really big. Kites have excellent flying skills and use their wings to ride the thermals till they are nearly out of sight.
I watch them do it from my field and they are very graceful and elegant in the air. If you have ever watched a crow and a kite flying together it is like a ballet.
Red kites are monogamous and will stay with the same partner for life. Unless the partner dies, then they will find another partner. They prefer to build their nest in the top of a tall tree near the edge of at wood as this gives good visibility and access.
They typically lay about 4 eggs, which take about 30 days to hatch. Wow so different to a horse, 11 months to hatch, well grow inside mum. Both Kite parents raise the chicks, the male searching for and returning with food and the female stays near the nest to protect the young. It takes 10 weeks for the chick to become self-sufficient. A fact I found quite fascinating was that at the mothers signal the chick will “play dead”, they are so successful at this that the approaching predator will ignore them thinking they are dead. How clever is that?
A fully grown read kite can weigh from between 800 and 1.3kg. Using our bags of sugar again, that is just over 1 bag of sugar up to just under 3 bags of sugar. Birds in general have hollow bones, and feathers to make them as light as possible so that they can fly.
Hare Coursing
Hello everyone, I thought I would start off my new adventure into investigating, with an investigation into Hare Coursing. When I helped my local Policing team, Hare Coursing was one of the things I helped my officer with. At the time, I didn’t really know much about it, so this has been great for me to find out more about what I was doing and how I assisted.
Ok so to start at the beginning, with the history of Hare Coursing and it is clear that some people consider Hare Coursing as a sport and others as a form of pest control. Origins go back centuries and what started as a sport for nobility, as a way of settling an argument as to who had the better dog, developed into a pastime enjoyed by the working class. The first club was formed in 1776, by 1800’s there were 150 recorded clubs, and by the end of that century, its followers had changed from Nobility to the working class.
That’s great I hear you say, but what is Hare coursing? In essence, two dogs chasing one hare, winner is the owner of the dog who catches the hare. You may have heard the term Lurcher referred to with regards to breed of dogs, traditionally a Lurcher iis a cross bred dog, who has been bred for speed and sight, and performs well when chasing a Hare.
Hunting with dogs was banned in the UK in 2004, (Hunting with Dogs Act 2004) and fines can be up to £5000, for those caught and convicted, but unfortunately, the large sums of money that can be made due to the betting, has meant it has just continued illegally.
It happens in late summer especially on arable fields when all the crops have been cut, as this gives large open spaces in which gives the hare room to run.
So how can you help. What I had to look for when I was out and about, was:-
- A convoy of estate cars and 4×4’s, usually with only men inside and lurcher type dogs in the boot.
- There might be a group of vehicles parked by the entrance to a field. That might be a gate directly into the field, a track or a public right of way.
- People walking where I wasn’t expecting them, for example, up the side of a field that I knew wasn’t a public right of way. They may have sticks and making a noise and be flushing wildlife out of the safety of the hedges and field margins
- You might see people with binoculars, standing along a grass verge looking into a recently cut arable field.
Safety is key here guys and if you do intend to report hare coursing to the Police, I suggest you remember as much details as you can, then leave the area before reporting anything.
Scans of the article as seen in the magazine
