Bird of play
Red kite in game of catch
ANDY Murray has a new high-flying rival – this talented bird who loves playing with tennis balls.
The soaring red kite showed astonishing catching skills as it picked up the ball, dropped it and then swooped down to pick it up in mid-air – before going through the whole process repeatedly.
But rather than playing a game of catch, experts believe the bird was practising its foraging skills – or had mistaken the ball for an egg.
Photographer Iain Heslop, 51, captured the extraordinary pictures at Ivinghoe Beacon, in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire.
Mr Heslop, from Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, said: “I was just on a photography shoot. I spotted this one kite and noticed it was flying a bit strangely.
“Then it appeared to drop something round. It swooped down and picked it back up again. It kept doing this so I just kept photographing it. It was doing it for about five minutes and then it flew away with it.
“I thought it was an apple at first but when I got back home and looked at the photos I realised it was a tennis ball. I thought maybe it had found it on the ground and mistaken it for an egg. It’s pretty unusual. I feel very lucky to have seen it.” Viola Ross-Smith, of the British Trust for Ornithology, said the kite was a juvenile and probably practising its hunting skills. She said: “It could be that it mistook the ball for prey or it could have been practising the skills it needs to forage successfully throughout its life. “It was almost certainly displaying drop-catch behaviour which has been seen in other birds. Young birds need to practise their skills so they can snatch food from the ground quickly.”