Birds of prey · Netherlands
Red Kite
Rode wouw · Milvus milvus
Through my lens
Long wings and a tail that never sits still
Watch a Red Kite for a minute and you notice the tail. It is long, deeply forked and rusty red, and it keeps twisting to steer. The wings are long and angled, with pale patches underneath, and the head is a pale whitish-grey.
It drifts low over farmland and woodland edges looking for small mammals, carrion and scraps, often with hardly a wingbeat. It rarely seems in a hurry.
Almost the whole world population lives in Europe. The species disappeared from large areas, but protection and reintroductions have brought it back to many of them, and in the Low Countries it is slowly getting less rare.
Selected work
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