It’s my Dad’s birthday today – the first of two anniversaries while we are on holiday. He got to choose the destination of our adventure for the day – Pembroke Castle and we were lucky to see a falconry display while there.

You could say that this Red Kite is a completely pedestrian sight to my parents who live in one of a handful of designated release sites in the UK when they were reintroduced to the wild here in the late 80s/ early 90s after near extinction by the middle of the last century. Mum and dad live a short stones’ throw from their new heartland and they can now be seen flying free over their house every single day. They never tire of seeing the beautiful, graceful creatures soaring around in the skies over their home and we love to see them whenever we visit. The Buckinghamshire kites are not native British Kites, the small population we had remaining were, according to Nottingham University, all descended from a single female making them incredibly genetically vulnerable so the birds that were released in Buckinghamshire came from a population in Spain. They are misunderstood birds because despite their fearsome looks and reputation, they don’t take livestock on a regular basis and their usual food is either carrion or small animals.

Nowadays the population near to my folks is thriving and the reintroduction is considered a great success. So it’s only fitting that we found one here at Pembroke Castle to give the very best kind of flypast a pensioner could hope for!