TELEVISION WILDLIFE CAMERAMAN DELIGHTS NATURE TRUST AUDIENCE

Red kites may look ferocious. In reality, says well-known wildlife cameraman and broadcaster Dee Doody, they are great big wusses. If you handle one, the worst it will do is to dribble on you.

In contrast, even the chicks of the goshawk are so vicious that they spend most of the day standing on the rim of their nest facing outwards. If they turn round and catch sight of each other, they will tear each other to bits.

Dee Doody was speaking at the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust’s annual Barnes Lecture held on October 27th. An audience of over a hundred crowded into the ballroom of the Metropole Hotel in Llandrindod Wells to enjoy his superb photography and knowledge of Radnorshire’s magnificent birds of prey.

Dee is familiar as a regular presenter of wildlife programmes on ITV. Many enjoyed his recent series ‘Wild About Wales’. He was born in Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia) and spent his early years in Africa’s vast spaces. He came to Britain in the 1960s and settled in Mid Wales in 1980.

However he nearly didn’t make it to the lecture. Two weeks previously, he told his audience, he had been within three minutes of death. He had severe food poisoning after eating honey-roast peanuts that were well past their sell-by date and had grown toxic bacteria. He suffered a total physical collapse and realised how close to death he was when he heard the ambulance man say, ‘I think we’re going to lose him’.

Also present at the lecture was Tony Cross, head of the Red Kite Trust. He told the audience that the British population of red kites is the only population in Europe that is growing.

Red kite numbers in Germany are falling particularly fast. This is because of the industrialisation of agriculture in the former East Germany following re-unification.

Dee Doody said that DNA tests showed that all red kites in Mid Wales traced their descent from a single female. No other British bird has been so close to extinction and survived.

This high level of in-breeding meant that in the early years of the project to re-establish the red kite population in Mid Wales, pairs often failed to raise their broods. Now, however, more genetic variation has entered the population and breeding is more successful.

In thanking Dee for his talk, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust conservation manager Julian Jones told the audience how lucky we were to have people like Dee Doody living in Mid Wales.