Yesterday morning the cats had left a dead Rabbit on the back lawn and I was just in time to see a Red Kite swoop down and steal the carcass off the lawn without even landing. It was done in a flash rather like an Osprey taking fish!
Marvellous!
JB.

They are so fast arn't they? We occasionally get given meat scraps from our local butcher and put them out on the lawn for the kites which circle overhead here on a daily basis now and it's wonderful to watch them swoop in & out like the Red Arrows. My husband sat in a chair by the patio window for half an hour one day with a camera trying to get a photo but every swoop was so fast that all he ever ended up with was just a big brown blur !
I've been told that they only eat dead carrion rather than live rats, voles, etc but don't know whether that's true.

I don't kow about live prey, but know that Kites perform a valuable function in clearing up carrion.

I went to a feeding station in Wales last Spring and the owner apologised that there weren't many there because of the lambing. Apparntly the kites had been clearing up the afterbirth and consequently weren't very hungry