Red Kite, Picture of the Week 5 March 2014

Red kite photographed on 3 March 2014, soaring above a multi-storey car-park in High Wycombe, Berkshire.

Three hundred or more years ago red kites lived throughout Britain and Ireland and were a common sight even in cities. Shakespeare wrote of them as stealing underwear from clothes lines! Kites have diverse appetites, eating small birds, rodents, frogs, insects, earthworms and carrion. Where they scavenged on man made rubbish and carrion they were often welcomed as useful in cleaning the streets.

 

But one hundred years ago the picture was very different. Only a handful of red kites were left, in the West of Wales. Elsewhere they had been shot and poisoned out of existence, mainly by landowners, farmers and gamekeepers. Other birds of prey were treated with the same arrogant brutality, but most survived in larger numbers than the unfortunate kites. 

 

Today the kites are back. Once they were protected, the Welsh population began to expand. In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland they have been re-introduced in groups, sometimes using birds originating in Scandinavia. In England the reintroduced birds can be found in the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire area, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire, Gateshead, Northumberland and the Newcastle area and Grizedale Forest in Cumbria. The Scottish population is centred around the release sites in Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling-shire and west Perthshire, around Black Isle in Ross-shire, and on the outskirts of Aberdeen City.

 

All the re-introduced groups have formed breeding populations and the total number in the UK today is around 1,600 pairs, according to the RSPB, who keep a close eye on them. Still not a lot of birds, but where they live, they are quite visible and not afraid to fly over towns and cities. The first kite for 150 years was seen in London in 2006 - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/shakespeares-red-kite-returns-to-london-after-an-absence-of-150-years-522771.html