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The Welsh Kite Trust
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Another old photograph
We had very few natural history books in the 6th form school library when I was a pupil at Ardwyn Grammar School, Aberystwyth, in the early 1970s - two, in fact!
Fortunately, both the Botany and Zoology teachers had their own libraries, which as a keen young naturalist I was always eager to look at whenever I had the opportunity.
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The Zoology teacher, the late David Sansbury, was one of a small band of kite watchers operating in the 1950s and would occasionally tell us about this rare bird in the upland valleys of north Ceredigion. It wasn’t long before I, too, was in kite country and being thrilled to see this majestic bird of prey in the places he’d mentioned.
One book on Sansbury’s bookshelf was ‘Birds in Britain Today’, written in 1934 by two eminent Cardiff ornithologists: Geoffrey Ingram and H. Morrey Salmon. It contains an early photograph of a kite flying over the Tywi valley at Rhandirmwyn, which somehow made an impression on my young mind. The setting and tone of the picture makes it very atmospheric, or evocative, as Peter Davis described it in Boda Wennol No 6 (Winter 1999). It was taken on 11th June 1926 and shows a rather distant kite in the air with the characteristic profile of the wooded Dinas hill in the background (now an RSPB reserve). This bird was one of a pair whose nest failed, possibly due to nest photography. In fact, you can just make out that the bird is starting to moult its wing feathers.
It had always been an ambition of mine to get hold of a copy of Ingram and Salmon’s book, but despite many visits to second hand bookshops, it wasn’t until last year that I eventually found a copy. |
Many of Morrey Salmon’s photographs and papers were given to the National Museum and Galleries of Wales, so let’s hope that the glass plate negative of this photograph has been preserved since it has a very special place in the history of the kite in Wales. In the meantime here is the photograph reproduced for you to enjoy.
Hywel Roderick
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