Red Kite shoot.

On a rainy grey overcast morning of March the 31st, Richard Peters, Luke Massey and myself met up in Oxfordshire to shoot the Red Kites., the forecast looked optimistic and promised us some sunshine, but as we all know, the weather in the UK can be temperamental.
I'd been to this particular location of Richard's on a previous shoot with him. We arrived within ten minutes of one another, him nine minutes before me.
Luke on the other hand was extremely eager to get to the location and set up early, having previously been there, he'd arrived at the crack of dawn and was already soaked through when we got to him.

We set up near a Muntjac Deer carcass that was of great interest to the kites. (Austin Thomas had noticed on a previous visit.)
The unfortunate deer often come acropper on the winding country roads (They can't drive!)


Luke showed us some images of the Kites on the ground he'd taken prior to our arrival, which boosted our morale, also the weather was looking promising as it had stopped raining.

As we patiently lay on wet grass for roughly two hours with not a hint of a Red Kite showing any interest in the gorgeous buffet laid out for them, (Cakes and wine!) Richard and me decided it was time for a spot of lunch at the local pub, aren't we just the lightweights! Luke was left with a load of our kit including a couple of my Pocket Wizards in an attempt to get a camera trap set up.

After filling up on bangers and mash and a home made burger an hour later we returned to Luke who'd virtually buried one of his cameras in the distance to attempt to get a remote shot of a Kite.

 He advised us that he'd not had any further luck. We laid down in wait again.

 After some time, we all ventured out to the carcass and remote camera setup to re-assess the situation.

I set up my remote 5DII with a 17-40mm lens, which in retrospect was far too wide for the situation (note to self to remember a 70-200mm next time.)  We then returned to our prone positions.


It was 14:00 when I think the first of the Red Kites actually showed some interest in anything.

The sun was by now cracking through the clouds and we had dried out somewhat.

The rest as they say is history.

All in all I think the three of us had a great day, not only shooting the Kites, but... erm, worrying about the psychological profile of Luke asking about finding scratched naked dead bodies! Haha! (You had to be there for that one!)

Follow Luke on Twitter @LMasseyImages
Follow Richard on Twitter @RichardpPhoto
Follow Austin on Twitter @AustinTphoto
Follow myself on Twitter @JaiGrieve