Black-winged Kite

While the Black-winged Kite from Splatt Bridge in Gloucestershire might win the prize of best bird of 2025 it appeared to be aiming to set other records: most distant bird; only bird that has made me run this year; hardest bird to photograph.  With this in mind, my footage of the beautiful raptor has delusions of adequacy, and you'll have to forgive me when I say that these really, really do not do justice to the motion, the elegance, and the sheer appeal of this hunter.

News of the Kite broke the night before just half an hour too late to allow me to make it to the area before dark, so I took the (good) advice of Andy Stockhausen and hoped it would roost where it had originally been found.  Last seen heading back towards Frampton on Severn at dusk, nobody had clocked where it would roost - and since Black-winged Kites don't migrate in the dark, there was a good chance it would be present in the morning.  Lessons learned from the East Anglia bird(s?) from July 2023 (that I missed) meant that finding the roost would be important in finding the bird.  

I increasingly find that I struggle to sleep when I know I'm getting up early to travel for any reason, but when it's for a bird as exciting as a Black-winged Kite there's a Christmassy sense to the occasion.  A sense of "once a year", of anticipation, hope, and of putting in the work before the day.  Intending to set off at 3.30am, I instead was in the car and moving by 2.20, and this meant that I arrived at the beautiful village of Frampton by 5am sharp.  Caught out a little bit - I haven't had an early birding start since the Cisticola and Stork combination slog two weeks ago, and it was still utterly pitch black.  I walked the half mile to the area the Kite had been viewed from the day before, meeting up with friends and people I knew from twitches as I walked.  

Half an hour and more of staring at what turned out to be a bleached log on the ground directly behind a hedgerow as the sun came up and I was beginning to wonder if the Kite had roosted a little closer to Slimbridge rather than following the river up as far as Frampton.  Not long after, a couple of birders from Wolverhampton brilliantly signalled down the canal that they were on the bird - it had been roosting between Frampton and Slimbridge, but had been flushed off the hedge by a Peregrine objecting to its presence.  I ran.  I have plantar fasciitis, and almost no left knee (rugby was a tough game back when I played it, and that's my excuse), and I do not run (think Gimli in Lord of the Rings refusing to be tossed, and you've got my attitude to pace).  But I ran.  Arriving, in pain, out of breath, to the Kite being chased over the river by the falcon, I whooped in elation, only to hear the pained shriek from a woman in one of the barges on the canal who had finally run out of patience with the growing crowd, "Just fucking shut up!".  6.13am.  Oops, sorry.

In the video clip Andy asks me if my ancient Samsung phone handheld at maximum video zoom and 75x magnification through my scope is working.  My nasal Mancunian reply of, "no, absolutely not..." and yet me including it here shows you how far away this bird was...

Over the next 90 minutes the Black-winged Kite flew to the north and then back south so that it was hovering and hunting over what appeared to be Slimbridge.  Andy, Owen and I decided to try the view from Slimbridge, and we walked to the Shepherd's hut where I'd been earlier this year to see Bluethroat with Lee.  Sadly, the distance to the Kite was almost exactly the same as from Frampton, and apart from the initial snaps in the dark with camera settings all wrong, I never got closer than 450 metres from this beauty.  Andy summed up the flight of this extraordinary creature really well, describing it as looking like a huge Nightjar; with flappy flight followed by gliding with wings held back like a displaying butterfly, a really alert posture, interspersed with Rough-legged Buzzard style hovering.  Such a pleasure to watch!

All this, and I'd almost refused to go.  My last twitch - to Northumberland for a Black-winged Pratincole - had been a dip, and the pain of that 6 hour round trip weighed heavy on my mind.  August had become a bit of a write-off in my thinking.  Local birding has been an utterly remorseless punishment during this month (11 species of birds in a 4 hour walk around Burnt Edge and the moors; and 9 species in two hours on the Moss) and nothing of note has been recorded closer than a 3 hour drive for months.  But I missed this bird in 2023, arriving a day late at each of the Suffolk and Essex sites, and knew I had to put in the effort this year.  I'm really glad I did - not only is this my 282nd UK species of the year, and my 19th lifer, it's a genuine contender for best bird of the year.  Not only that, but it's enthused me for the autumn coming up: with 5 child-free days ahead over the weekend, I feel a visit to Spurn might be on the cards...