Lollipops and Kites

The lollipop bird is the long tailed tit.  Aegithalos caudatus, the tiny pink, black and white creature that twiddles around in the trees looking for tiny spiders and insects. I called them such name when I was a child and it has stuck. They are basically a little ball on a stick. In winter they roam in flocks often with other tit species and warblers and Gold-crests, the flocks can sometimes reach over one hundred individuals, but more often a dozen or so.

The Red kite, Milvus milvus, lives pretty easily these days with all the hand outs that people feed them with, without them they would not be so numerous in the English midlands and Wales. They are mainly scavengers but will hunt reptiles and amphibians if they are in the open. They will also take large insects and small fish in shallow water. The species nests colonially mainly in oak trees.

The black kite Milvus migrans, is very similar but has a shorter forked tail and is slightly smaller in size.as its name suggests, the bird is capable of long migrations and colonizes far off lands. A slow colonization of northern Europe has been happening over the last twenty years and many birds now resident and breed just across the English channel in France and Belgian. It will only be a matter of time before they are in southern England. I watch them every year cross through Dorset during May but they do not stay.

Note the short legs that both species have. They look out of proportion.

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