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Behind the Wheel

The driver's seat of a car is not the optimum position for bird watching. A lot of birds do cross the field of vision but there are only a few that are distinctive enough to identify at speed. The red kite is one of these and today I had to travel down to Goring on the Thames between Reading and Oxford. This involved following the edge of the Chiltern escarpment at around 8am this morning.

Most journeys that I make in that area are going towards Oxford and I typically see between 1 and 3 kites. Today I saw 12 with groups of 3 at Watlington and 4 at Benson. It was striking how they seemed to be concentrating over the larger villages. Coming back the concentration over Watlington was even higher, they were mostly at chimney pot height and I couldn't make an acurate count but there were at least half a dozen. As they crossed my line of site at close range in a traffic queue, I was able, for a change, to appreciate the full beauty of their plumage but it was more than a little distracting when I was trying to thread my way between parked cars and oncoming traffic.

On the outskirts of Chesham one was circling a large tree, suddenly two magpies appeared and attacked it. I didn't see the outcome.

Down near the Thames I did see a large number of martins, the first that I have noticed this year. They are not common around Ley Hill and I haven't seen any swallows yet.

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