Last week we spotted a red kite soaring over the farm. It is not an uncommon occurrence nowadays. These spectacular birds which are easily identifiable by their forked tails, chestnut colour and white patches on the underside of what can be a 2 metre wingspan became extinct in England and Scotland in the 1870's with only a few birds remaining in mid Wales.
During the Middle Ages red kites were protected by a royal decree and were valued scavengers that helped clean up filthy streets. However by the 16th Century, in common with other birds of prey, they were being persecuted as 'vermin'. As numbers declined and they became rarer, their eggs became more valuable to collectors, which hastened their demise. Since the early 1900's, farmers and landowners' have made dedicated efforts to protect them. In the 1950s they suffered a setback when the rabbit myxomatosis outbreak decimated rabbit numbers and destroyed their main food supply.
The re-introduction of birds from Europe in the1980's and 1990's stimulated population expansion and there are now around 1800 breeding pairs in the UK -over half of them in Wales! Adult kites tend to be quite sedentary and not move far from their nest sites - so it may be the visitors we see are juvenile kites - out seeing a bit of the world (or maybe we have a lot of rabbits
