Red Kite looks the same across its entire range from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. Getting to grips with this variation is one of the keys to safely separating the two species. In Black Kite, however, both individual and geographical variation are extensive. Plumage-wise Red Kite is the less variable of the two, as there is little individual or geographical variation. In a wider context, Red Kite is a western, typically European species, while Black has a huge range extending across the entire Palaearctic region from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.Īlthough the two are quite different, misidentifications do occur. In Britain the former is an increasing resident, while Black is a rare visitor, mostly seen in spring and autumn. This bird is showing the typical upperparts of adult Red Kite, with a bright cinnamon and deeply forked tail, contrasting light head and dark upperwings, except for the distinctly marked rufous coverts (Dick Forsman).Įurope has two species of Milvus kites: Red Kite and Black Kite. Dick Forsman offers all the advice you need to confidently recognise these species in all plumages.Īdult Red Kite (Pyrenees, Spain, 1 November 2017). The outlying possibility of both Asian and African subspecies, plus hybrids, further complicates the picture. The very unfamiliarity of the latter means that it could be overlooked, especially with distant views. However, identification can be made trickier by the much rarer Black Kite. The fate of birds connects with the fate of humans.After almost having been lost in Britain, Red Kite is an increasingly familiar sight across the country – a real conservation success. Rather, it’s a holistic meditation on the interdependence of living things – of all that breathe. Sen doesn’t see his film as a nature or wildlife film. But that’s what they’re interested in and we had to respect the integrity of their lives and their concerns.” The film is ultimately ecological and does not have a fractal political ambition.”īut he adds, “I feel it’s firmly political in the sense that the brothers are concerned about the relationship between humans and birds, which is its own kind of politics. “I was interested in how the real world leaks in, and that’s the way resonances or tremors of the world are sensed. And you can sense the political as a kind of oblique tangential presence in the film, the fact that the city is on the boil and there’s a lot of turbulence developing in the city of Delhi the last two years,” Sen notes. “The sectarian stuff is very obvious in what’s happening. While the director gestures toward that, he doesn’t make it an overt topic of All That Breathes. There is an obvious junction between the toxic skies and the toxic political atmosphere. The brothers, as Muslims, are potential targets of violence. Hanging over Delhi is not only smog but, as in the rest of India, rising political tensions as a result of strident Hindu nationalism. He says absurd things, like, ‘What happens if there is a nuclear war - will the birds survive?’ …You really fall in love with him.” “He gets the laughs and things happen to him - his glasses get taken away. “Salik brings a kind of unguarded innocence to the film, which is helpful because it contrasts with the seriousness of the brothers,” Sen says. Salik Rehman in ‘All That Breathes’ Sideshow/Submarine Deluxe/HBO Documentary Films The minute that you walked into that tiny, damp, air-lit basement, and you see the metal cutting machines on one side and these incredible regal birds on the other, it’s cinematically dense and riveting.” And that’s when I came upon the work of the brothers. So, I started researching what happens to birds when they fall down. And I remember seeing this vaguely while driving my car one day and I was truly gripped with this figure. “I was really gripped by this figure of the black dot in the sky, which is the black kite,” recalls filmmaker Shaunak Sen, “the lazy gliding dots that you see - one of the them starts falling down. In All That Breathes, brothers Nadeem and Saud operate a subterranean workshop-cum-makeshift animal hospital where they aid injured and ailing black kites, a bird of prey increasingly vulnerable to Delhi’s intense air pollution. One of the top contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars this year ranges from the skies above Delhi, India to a basement below the city’s north end.
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