A Finchampstead man captured a dramatic image of a red kite in his garden last weekend.
Ray Little told Wokingham Today: “We have frequent flying displays from squadrons of red kites, and nothing is more dramatic than when they drop or swoop into our garden to scoop up food left out for them.
Accomplished photographer Ray also admitted that red kites are a challenge to photograph.
“They are very, very fast and can be in and gone in seconds,” he said.
The images captured by Ray were down to some serious planning.
He said: “I put some turkey scraps on a board at the top of the garden and waited, camera focussed and on continuous shooting. They swooped in from the right and took off again towards the house. I caught that one as he headed straight for me.
As usual the magpies were the first and last on the scene which I think is what tips off the kites but they tend to scatter for a kite. Some of the other pics caught a fleeing magpie and after the kites had finished, the magpies cleaned up the board so well that I didn’t even need to brush it off.
For anyone wanting to replicate Ray’s image, it was captured at 1/800th of a second with an aperture of F5 on his 200mm lens.
He added: “Apart from enlarging and cropping, I haven’t done any image editing.
“The fact that its eyes are clear tells me the focus is as good as I will get, but note the slight blur on the end of the left wing, which is just on the edge of the depth of field. It gives the sense of speed.”
