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by mjfisher 63 days ago
The reintroduction of Red Kites to the UK has been a huge success. I don't get particularly excited by birds normally, but regularly seeing such large creatures (almost 2m wingspans) curving through the sky is nothing short of majestic. They're almost reminiscent of dragons.

I wonder if I'll get to feel the same about golden eagles soon too.

5 comments

I have large lungs, and can be very loud, and where I live the eagles ridge soar whilst going from one place to another, at just a bit higher than the tree tops, mostly baldies here with the ocasional golden, and for fun I started, belowing EEEGULL strait up at them, and they do a double take WTF, pull a hard wing over to get a better look and the finnish there turn, and blast off down wind, so if you get the chance, punking eagles is a blast
Can vouch for the loudness capability of large lungs.

A lady sitting in front of me at the football said she could feel the vibrations in her chest when I was loudly booing at the footy.

I had an x-ray a couple of years ago and was asked if I was a smoker, strangely because of the size of my lungs. Apparently, ironically, smokers lungs are larger than average and I have to assume it's to balance out all the damage that smoking does. I used to be a swimmer, so I figured my lungs must have developed from the requirement of controlled breathing as part of swimming (and the general fitness and therefore additional oxygen processing requirements).

I don't get particularly excited by birds normally

Same. Sometimes one of my deer will get thwacked by a car just hard enough it stumbles up my driveway and falls over. There will be 3 golden eagles and 2 bald eagles fighting over it. The first time I saw them I had a double-take ... I swore at first I saw men sitting on my driveway fence. Golden eagles are massive and quite awe inspiring to watch. When they fight over road kill they stretch their wings out entirely.

Each time I have to make sure I still have an outdoor cat and I have to keep an eye on him until they are done. They seem to only eat the soft bits and leave the muscle meat for the ravens. Then the deer turns into a fly factory which I have to spray.

Wow! What state is this in?
Wyoming, Rocky Mountains. Not far from Yellowstone.
We have a pair of kites that regularly land in a tree a few meters from my garden. They are beautiful looking creatures (even if not very beautiful sounding). It always lifts my spirits to see them. I hope the reintroduction of Eagles is similarly successful.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s we'd go on holiday in mid Wales, and I remember it being a big thing that it was the home of some of the last few red kites in the UK. Now I see dozens of them most times I drive around the south of England. Never gets old.
I live close to one of the bigger sites and they're so magnificent.

On the best days (like yesterday) I had them hovering over my garden, facing the wind, maybe 2-3 metres above the roof level.

So beautiful.