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Red kites spreading into England from Wales16/11/2009 15:07:09
Red kites are spreading into England. Photo credit Wildlife Extra Red kites moving east from Central Wales November 2009. For the first time, staff at Wildlife Extra spotted a red kite outside our own office in Herefordshire. We have recived a few reports of sightings locally in the last year, at the Weir Gardens (National Trust) in March 2009, Dilwyn in June and Brampton Bryan in 2008, but we now have first hand (eye) evidence of the kites spread. Red kites have also been spotted in Shropshire. As numbers grow in Mid Wales red kites will continue to expand their range and we expect and hope to see them regularly over the next few years. After years of persecution, Red kites had dissappeared from almost the whole of the UK apart from Mid-Wales by 1900. Even there, despite the efforts of some local farmers and landowners, the population dropped as low as 20 birds in the 1920's. Thankfully today the Red kites are one of the great success stories as hundreds of birds now thrive in Mid Wales, especially around the red kite feeding station at Gigrin Farm, and they have also provided the stock for relocating kites to the Chilterns, North East England, the Grampians and Ireland. In about 1970, an immigrant female Red Kite from central Europe joined the Welsh breeding population - detected by genetic research on blood samples taken from Welsh kite chicks - and added a new bloodline. With further protection and invaluable help from the farmers on whose land the kites nested, numbers continued to recover so that by 1993, after experiencing a dramatic increase in breeding success over the preceding 4 or 5 years, the Welsh breeding population exceeded 100 breeding pairs. In fact the red kites in Mid Wales are now so numerous, numbering as many as 500 at Gigrin Farm alone in winter, that they are being used as a seed population for other reintroduction schemes across the UK and Ireland, and it is possible, and indeed very easy in some places, to see red kites in many places across the country.
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Read the comments about this article and leave your own comment
To agree with Helen, apart from one or two chicks donated from the project which aimed to boost Welsh productivity by "manipulating" broods and clutches at risk of robbery or desertion, Welsh kites were not used as stock for English and Scottish re-introductions as, at the time, there were far too few of them and to take any would have potentially damaged the donor population. Thankfully things have improved dramatically and we are currently collecting up to 53 chicks a year, under license from the Countryside Council for Wales to re-introduce the birds to Southern Ireland (in partnership with the Golden Eagle Trust) and to Northern Ireland (in partnership with RSPB).
Welsh birds ARE spreading over the border to England. Welsh Kite Trust volunteers survey both Shropshire and Herefordshire for breeding kites. Eleven nests were found in Shropshire in 2009 and several of the adults concerned ARE wearing wing-tags that show that they originated from Welsh nests as does one of the only two known breeding kites in Herefordshire.
More information can be obtained from our website;
www.welshkitetrust.org
WELSH KITE TRUST
Posted by: Tony Cross | 20 Nov 2009 15:34:00
Can I just say, the Welsh kites were not used to 'restock' the Chilterns. The majority, albeit not all, of the kites in the Chilterns orignated from Spain. The Chilterns kites were used in reintroduction projects in the North East and most recently in Aberdeen. You can read more about the Chilterns kites on
http:// www.redkites.net
Additionally, if there isn't a positively identifiably wing tag on a kite, it isn't possible to say where they are originating from. I receive dozens of kite sightings all over the UK, and without wing tags, I cannot say whether the kites originate from Wales/Chilterns/Northants etc.
Posted by: Helen | 16 Nov 2009 18:30:13