"Yellow" catches the late flight!!

"Yellow" catches the late flight!!

Look back in the archives a little way and you will see a post about road kills and injuries.....There is a photo of a Yellow-billed kite Milvus aegyptius whom we affectionately called "Yellow". I had found him on the road with an injured wing and took him in to see if we could fix him up. I bound the wing in a bandage and he stayed that way in my spare-room living off a diet of pilchards and scrambled eggs!

Buoyed by the success of our rehabilitation of the White-backed vulture "Victor" I did not want to give up on this one. I am something of a "cold scientific type" spouting on about "population this" and "landscape-scale that" but it really dawned on me that the value of these birds comes down to individual level!

Well to cut a long story short...the pull of his migration genes must have been strong because "Yellow" healed fast and was flying around the room and testing his wings. I took him out of the house and my wife photographed as he flew off heading North!!

I have not seen many other YBK's for a while so I think he has definitely caught "the late flight" and has some catching up to do to find the rest of his species.

The Hwange Birder