Framedlight

Gigrin farm is only a 15 minute drive from Rhayader and it is here that they feed the red kites. There are a number of hides for people to stand in based on one side of a field and at 3.00pm in the summer and 2.00pm in the winter a tractor comes onto the field and scatters a large amount of meat in. The red kites, a few buzzards and a number of crows gather waiting for this event and as soon as the meat is down start to feed. They seem to come in waves, it will go quiet for several minutes and then a large number of birds will come in to pounce on the food. I couldn't count how many kites there were in the sky at any one time but there must have been at least 50. It is thrilling to hear their wingbeats over the top of the hide. I was using the Nikon D800 to photograph them, either with my 70-200mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter, or more commonly my old Sigma 400mm, which is fine as long as you keep it on f8. I went in to the lowest priced hide just for photogra...

At the end of August we set out in our camper van for a holiday in Wales. There was Alan, myself and our daughter Mairi who was to stay with us for a week. We had no particular agenda and had booked the first 2 nights only as we wished to see the red kites at Gigrin Farm in mid-Wales We trundled off from Cambridge to the campsite at Llafadog fields on the outskirts of Rhayader, arriving on a warm afternoon. The site was very pleasant and had a small stream running across the bottom of it which was fenced off, but had a stile which we had to lift our elderly and rather heavy dog over. We drove to see the nearest reservoir which is the bottom one of the chain and then made a return journey after supper to try and catch a sundown. Mairi used the opportunity to run back to the campsite. The bridge is on the top of a submerged dam that separates the Garregdu (right) and Caban-coch (left) reservoirs.The reservoirs were built to provide water to Birmingham, an aqua...