One of the birds had a tag on it so I guess it must be one of the original one's released from Harewood House as part of the recent programme to bring this beautiful bird back from the brink of extinction.
It's heartening to think that so many of them have come to the Yorkshire Wolds. There was a time when I thought I would never see red kites here in my lifetime.
One winter I saw a woodpecker dodge one. The incident became the subject of the painting above. For more on the story click here to link to my latest column in The Yorkshire Post.
I've got loads of fieldfares in the garden at the moment. They're easily tempted in with old apples now that their natural food source is almost depleted in this long cold period that we're having. 
They're so hungry at the moment they're even eating dog rose hips. I've never seen any bird eating these before!
I took these pictures as the snow thawed.
But it wasn't long before we had another fall, and again the hares were less well camouflaged. This can makes them vulnerable to predators such as foxes.
And as it got worse you could easily see how difficult it is for wildlife at this time.
Peepo! When the snow is this deep, hares have to resort to feeding off the branches of low hedges and bushes - this makes them very unpopular with farmers.
This hare is hunkering down in a form, scratched into the snow. It keeps them out of the icy wind.
The RSPB has warned that the savage wintry weather is the single greatest threat to wildlife this millennium. This week the society launched emergency action to help threatened red list species survive the icy blast. 
I'm thinking of making mallards the subject of one of my Christmas cards next year and so I drove up to Fridaythorpe yesterday to take some pictures on the frozen pond.
It's ideal weather for photographing them, not just because the white scenery is what you need for a Christmas card, but also because the pond is frozen and so you can see their feet. Usually the ducks are bobbing on the water and you have to wait for them to come out to get a good picture of their legs!
I won't actually begin painting the picture until the summer, which will feel odd at that time, but I need to get the pictures now whilst I can and then of course I'll have all that time to get the perfect pose and work on the composition!
I took a break over Christmas to be with my family, but the snowfall made me keen to get back to work and I have spent this week out and about taking some landscape photographs which I will eventually use as backgrounds for my subjects.
I paint directly from photographs that I take, but I don't necessarily use the same background and will often cut a subject out of one background and paste it onto another if I think it works better that way.
The snow scenes will obviously work well in paintings for next year's Christmas exhibition, or may possibly turn up in future Christmas cards.
