I have spent almost 40 years working in engineering.
My main interest away from work is monitoring and photographing red kites, these two go hand in hand and I often gain information from photographs that was missed in the field. I often go home to review my day and the photographs often identify birds, they sometimes reveal what the bird was doing. Only today I got home to learn that I have seen two kites which have gone unreported for a long time and one was carrying nesting material in an area where no nest is known.
See the Friends of the Red Kite (FORK) in the northeast website here.
The Red Kite is a bird of prey which has gone from being almost extinct in the UK to now being listed by the RSPB as green status. That means they are no longer under threat. Try telling that to the population in North East England.
94 red kites were released into the Derwent Valley between 2004 and 2006 with a lot of publicity; the local people have taken to them really well. Today, almost 12 years after the initial release and it looks like we have fewer kites than the 94 we started with. For some reason we appear to be losing our kites faster than they are reproducing. At best we have a stable, but not increasing, population of kites.
The first question that should be considered is how do we know our numbers?
The kites are regularly monitored and the best way to estimate numbers is during the breeding season and at winter roost.
During the breeding season volunteers go out and look for kites nests. We do this by looking for kites displaying and we watch them at a distance to ensure that we don’t disturb the kites at this crucial time. Members of the public who report sightings are a great help and they are all followed up. In autumn and winter the kites mostly join a communal roost and this gives us the opportunity to once again count the kite numbers.
You would expect that the roost numbers would reflect the number of kites seen during the breeding season, plus the younger kites that were too young to breed and we do see a rise in the roost numbers after a good breeding season. The roost count after our best breeding season also gave us our best autumn/winter roost count. The breeding season a year later was not as good and this and has been reflected at the roost count. Unbelievably, Aberdeen, remember that they were the project after us, had more than 100 kites at roost. The Gateshead count for winter 2015-16 only produced 43 red kites. There is an argument that if the winter is mild some kites stay on territory rather than head to the roost. There is also a school of thought that only one of the parents accompanies the fledglings to the roost and the other stays on territory. The same could be said for kites at the other re-introduction areas.
Before this year I have often seen kites while driving to and from work or between my two places of work. These sightings have totally dried up and I have not seen a single kite while travelling these same routes in 2016.
Why could the number of kites appear to be diminishing or at best remaining stable when other re-introductions have prospered? Some people may wonder and I will give my thoughts.
We probably have a few reasons why our numbers appear to be low.
Does the weather play a part in the low numbers of kites in North East England? Yes, it does play a part but our rainfall figures are as good as most places in the UK. Between 1981 and 2010 our annual rainfall figure was 651mm for Newcastle, compare that with 866mm for Aberdeen, 835mm in Sheffield and 660mm in Oxford. Those figures tend to suggest that rain is not an issue for the long term well-being of the kites in our area.
We know that the weather is more unstable with long periods of heavy rain. Seasons appear to be less defined with winters being less cold with cold snaps seemingly going later into the spring and summers not being as warm. The success of other re-introduction programmes seems to hint that the weather isn’t the main factor. After all, Aberdeen is further north and the weather is usually not as good as the weather in the North East of England. I know that to be true because I lived there for 3 years and each year it snowed in October. High winds have caused problems with young kites having been blown out of the nest, not all have survived.
Another natural problem for our kites is that they suffer from predation. During the breeding season nests are monitored from a distance to ensure that disturbance is kept to a minimum. We know that young have been predated because chicks have gone missing from a number of nests and the nest lining material has been partially dragged out of the nests. Each year one or two nests are predated and young kites are lost. Almost 50% of nests that got to the incubation stage in 2015 failed because of weather, human disturbance or predation. A total of 25 kites were known to have fledged, which is disappointing and 10 down on the previous year’s total of 35 fledged chicks. We have also had two adult kites which were reported to have died and the probable causes of death were predation by fox. One kite had already been in rehabilitation a number of times, I would have to guess that the other kite must have been injured for the fox to be able to kill it as kites are always looking around when eating. I have observed a kite eating a dead rabbit which had been placed in the middle of a field to help its recovery after rehabilitation. The kite was constantly looking around, it would remove meat from the rabbit and it would have its head up and be looking around within seconds.
Some people have suggested that maybe our kites do not always have enough food. They are scavengers. The North East of England is much the same as any other area as far as food availability goes. We have wildlife and at some point they will die. We also have roads and like other areas, animals die on roads. We have large rural areas where pheasants and rabbits often wander onto the roads and are killed; the A1 around Chester-le-Street can be like a chicane on some days when you’re trying to avoid both dead and live pheasants which regularly run out into the road. Go further west and onto the moors and the number of sheep which have been killed on the roads would feed all of our kites alone. The number of red kites should not be low because of a lack of food.
Kites from Gateshead move to other areas; just like kites from other areas join the Gateshead population. We have had a number of reports of our wing-tagged kites being seen in other parts of the UK. That doesn’t explain why we have fewer kites now as we have (or have had) at least as many kites in our area from areas such as Scotland, Yorkshire and Grizedale (Cumbria). This is actually brilliant news as it means the greater genetic diversity gives all our kites a better chance of survival long-term.
A lack of territories could be a reason for a low numbers of kites. That is not part of the problem as the core area of the Lower Derwent Valley is the only area where we have kites in good numbers. The number of kites reduces significantly once you travel in any direction away from the core area and the number of possible territories actually increases when you travel north, south or west.
Our kites do have accidents. We don’t lose too many to accidents that we know of but we do occasionally take kites in for rehabilitation due to accidents on the roads. At least 2 of our kites have perished on the roads; only last spring our most well-known kite, Red Phillip was injured and found close to a road. Luckily, he was taken into rehabilitation and seems to be doing fine a year later. We have had reports of a kite being killed on the A1 at Chester-le-Street and a number (5 or 6) of passes were made of that section of the road and the only birds found were dead pheasants. A female pheasant was seen and photographed in the exact same place that the dead kite was reported so it is unlikely that the dead bird was a kite.
Our kites are certainly being persecuted. The first red kite to be born in Northumberland, after an absence of approximately 170 years, was found dead. The cause of death was poisoning. Our red kites die from gunshot injuries and they are also the innocent victims of poisoning, usually killed by rat poison, aldicarb or what seems to be the poison of choice, carbofuran.
We know that at least 10 birds have died because of illegal poisoning in our region; one was found by a dog walker on a grouse moor at Muggleswick in County Durham. Within weeks two other red kites were found dead near High Spen; they were both victims of poisoning. Believe it or not, it took almost a full year for the toxicology results to be released after the corpses were sent to Natural England under the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme. Natural England was less than helpful and had not acted in a way that we think is beneficial to bringing those responsible for these crimes to justice. At least one other red kite introduction area has had to wait at least a year for the toxicology results to be revealed. How are the criminals who carry our wildlife crimes ever going to be brought to justice if it takes 12 months to even verify that a crime had taken place?
Something needed to be done at this stage and Friends of Red Kites decided to issue a Press Release about local persecution so bringing it into the public domain. A Persecution Working Group was also formed and FoRK members were asked to e-mail their MPs in an attempt to highlight the situation regarding our kites.
I contacted to my MP, Sharon Hodgson by e-mail. Sharon clearly cares about our kites and she in turn passed my concerns on to Liz Truss. Liz Truss then forwarded the e-mail to Rory Stewart, MP & Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Who must have looked at it for a minute and decided to roll out the lazy excuse that the kites are doing well nationally. They are doing well nationally; they’re not doing well in the north east of England though and that is why I contacted my MP in the first place. The red kite is legally protected and the people who are responsible for them simply don’t care, or at least they don’t care enough to do anything about the persecution and disappointing number of our kites.
When kites are found injured they are usually taken to a vet, usually by a member of the public who found the injured bird. Most of these are routinely given an x-ray to check to see if the bird has and internal injuries. Almost every kite contains lead pellets and most, if not all, are from shotguns. They’re not pellets from an air rifle; they are pellets which are not normally associated with being used in populated areas.
The people who usually use shotguns are gamekeepers, hunter and farmers; I guess that you can use your own judgement to work out how and where the birds pick up their injuries.
Injured or dead kites are usually found by members of the public and they are only found on or near public footpaths. The kite found poisoned on a grouse moor was found by a dog walker who was out on a public right of way. Kites are highly unlikely to only be injured or killed next to a public right of way so how many are actually going undiscovered and therefore unreported? Kites get as far as Muggleswick in County Durham and then they fail to do well. Only one nest has been found in this area and that only lasted one year (2008) and was close to Blanchland. One kite was raised in this nest. He or she hasn’t been seen since it was ringed and tagged. Another nesting attempt was observed 2 years ago in the vicinity of Derwent Reservoir; a kite was photographed by a member of the public. The kite was carrying nesting material. No nest was ever found.
Many hours are spent at the west end of the Derwent valley at Muggleswick, Derwent Gorge, Edmundbyers, and Blanchland. Evidence of breeding was noted last year. Although nests were not located, so far it would appear that this has not been sustained in 2016 as no breeding activity has been noted thus far. We still monitor this part of County Durham in the hope that we can locate breeding kites as we hope that they will continue to move out of the core area, so far any attempts to do this have not ended well.
That was objective and fair. No ranting; just facts as he saw them.
Yes, excellent, Mick. Many thanks.
I remember when red kites were quite rare in mid Wales – and how wonderful it was when they were protected and subsequently did so well and extended their range.
Too well for some, apparently.
Thanks, I did try to remain balanced and I’m glad that I was able to come across that way. Over time you forget some of the bad incidents but they come flooding back once you start thinking about them again.
Persecution does look like it is the biggest threat that our kites face, sadly.
Here’s some further reading which I didn’t cover as I didn’t want to go on too much http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/red-kites-been-poisoned-death-4446054
All we can do is to keep monitoring and get as many people out watching them as they will be safer that way.
Both in the country and the towns a new and deadly poison is being used by everyone it seems and its called rat poison! In 2017 members of the public will not be able to buy it but councils give free service for rats often caused by bird feeding.
Kites are picking up this poison via secondary poisoning after eating the rats and mice just like Barn owls and Kestrels. It is now close to getting into the human food chain!
http://www.chickbooks.co.uk/#!Are-we-being-poisoned/cfji9/56defab10cf2a71b043b7150
If it does get into the human food chain, maybe the councils et al will wonder how that happened and do something about it.
They won’t do anything otherwise.
that’s why non toxic terriers are a far better, more humane (and at least for the terrier man/woman more fun) option for rat control.
Or a healthy population of native predators – stoat, weasel, polecat and of course birds of prey. In the seventies on the estate I lived in there was quite a serious rat problem, one of my earliest memories is seeing one poking it’s head out a hole in the bottom of a brick wall. It didn’t last long, a stoat moved in and within a very short time the rats had all gone. Rabbits might not be such a pest when the polecat gets fully re established, and if you don’t like grey squirrels you’ll be happy if pine martens move back into your area.
I just spent four days in the area, based at Corbridge and visiting Blanchland, Derwent Water and Keilder. The area looks perfect for raptors. There are abundant rabbits and scores of pheasants. Red Grouse cover the moorland. What – notably – is absent are raptors (and Ravens). I saw one Buzzard, two Kestrels, and a pair of Ravens. It would all be rather mysterious but this is sheep and shooting country. Enough said really. In terms of the scenery this has to be one of the most stunning areas in England, but without its raptors it can never be truly beautiful.
Charlie Moors – as a high profile member of LACS why are you so against killing raptors but so in favour of the law requiring people to kill other wildlife?
giles – yawn!
Mark as a supporter of the Hunting Act’s absurd requirement to kill flushed wildlife en masse you really don;t actually have a leg to stand on do you?
You back it being illegal to shoot a driven grouse – legal to shoot a walked up grouse and illegal not to kill a flushed deer, hare, rabbit, fox &c &c.
You pretend to support good animal welfare and conservation but gunning down herds of deer fleeing from dogs – which both you and Charlie Moores not only back but support it being illegal not to do when they are flushed is both hideously cruel and apallingly bad for conservation.
giles – you are tiresomely making up my views. I’ve asked/told you not to do that. Stop it.
Mark I don’t think I am ‘making up your views’ you continually state that you are against wildlife crime – are you or aren’t you or are you against some but not all? Should we obey all wildlife laws or just the ones we agree with? If you believe we should obey all wildlife law that then clearly you are in favour of gunning down herds of deer that one flushes from cover with a pet dog.
Maybe you think it’s ok to do some wildlife crime but not other wildlife crime. if so then my sincere apologies.
Giles, neither Mar nor LACS have actually stated that they support the wording of the Hunting Act. I strongly suspect they don’t. However they are hardly going to say that are they? You have to understand how people and politics work.
An ex keeper recently claimed that goshawks were decimating tawny owl and kestrel numbers in Keilder. Birds of prey are to blame for everything it seems.
Raptors or badgers, both convenient scape goats?
A petition has just started to put ravens on the general license, have recovered a bit too much from Persecution for some people. Images are being produced of injured and dead sheep supposedly attacked and even killed by ravens, so sheep farmers to get the right to shoot as many as they want. Funny thing is that up till now the same type of images were being used as ‘evidence’ that badgers ‘were out of control’ and going for sheep. The same character who has been prominent in vilifying badgers, and then ravens is also the one who blamed birds of prey being rare in Keilder, because of other birds of prey. Only a matter of time before they get blamed for council tax rises, trade deficit and poor service in restaurants.
That’s why you should take no notice of Trip Advisor
Babies wont be safe in their prams
I spent my childhood in this area and long summer days lying in the heather listening to the bees buzzing and the squeaky wheel of the golden plover calling. I recall curlew, peewit and snipe too. All those things the grouse lot boast about.
I was 15 before I ever saw a buzzard and I only recall seeing the one. I never saw any other raptor; hen harrier and merlin being confined to the pages of my dad’s old copy of Peterson, Mountford and Hollom.
The Derwent reintroduction filled me with joy and the sight of red kites over the factories, and industrial estates of the Team Valley and Metro Centre is fantastic.
BUT – the stark ‘ring of death’ confining these and other raptors (just as in the Black Isle) remains a disgrace to the shooting lot and will be increasingly stark to see. If the people of the urban fringe of Newcastle are to be denied the joy of red kites by grouse (and pheasant) managers, then we will have yet more support across the population.
Rather than committing wildlife crime by killing wildlife what’s your view on committing it by refusing to kill it? Can such crime ever be justified?
Mick, very good and well balanced article. I did my PhD fieldwork on some large estates in East Yorkshire in the 1980s and many gamekeepers I came across at that time still had a 19th C view of their job (gibbets and all). How are Buzzards doing in the region? Are they suffering similar levels of persecution?
The local buzzards seem to be doing quite well and I personally see more of them than red kites although the numbers are close. It should be remembered that buzzards are less likely to be persecuted because in my experience they don’t come as close to people as kites do so are harder to shoot. Kites mainly eat carrion and buzzards less so, kites are more likely to suffer from poisoning because of their diet. I have spent many hundreds of hours watching kites and only seen them eating either carrion or worms.
Watching kites feeding on worms is just like watching a blackbird feed on them, they stamp their feet until the worm surfaces, it’s quite funny watching them.
A volunteer at my nearest kite feeding attraction told me in the early days the farm that hosted the reintroduction also ran a pheasant shoot. Unfortunately the shooters’ ID skills were a bit deficient and some took pot shots at the kites ‘thinking’ they were pheasants. The farm dropped the shoots and has never looked back.
I was lucky enough to be in mid-Wales when there were only 12 pairs of red kites in the UK – and used to see them every day, virtually all the time, so that I became quite blase about them. Now I live in the North Pennines and it is blindingly obvious that this is perfect country for red kites and exceedingly puzzling that the introductions all around us (Derwent Valley, Kielder etc) have never resulted in a single red kite being seen around here. There is but one explanation.
It’s perfect country for Short Eared Owls, Hen Harriers, Buzzards and Peregrines too but you won’t see as many of them as you ought to either. Never mind the Goldies that ought to be there too. Maybe Giles would like to comment on their absence.
Well, one reason animals can be absent can be because someone’s killed them. Which is why I think it’s important as a matter of principle that laws don’t require people to.
Giles, I simply don’t understand the point you are trying to make? Why do laws require gamekeepers to remove all raptors from upland landscapes?
Exactly. I do see the occasional buzzard and short-eared owl, but we know only too well what happens to hen harriers (NB the tragic story of the nesting harriers on Geltsdale last year).
Red Kite sightings in Derbyshire are still something of a rarity & a reported bird still creates excitement. I should be seeing these birds everyday on my 10 mile drive to work just like I see Buzzard. An external force is having an impact on the spread of the bird. A ban on Driven Grouse Shooting would help I’m sure, so get signing if you haven’t already!!!
Here in Yorkshire Kites have done relatively well compared to County Durham, a fact that gives me no pleasure.However our birds seem strangely reluctant to penetrate the grouse moor areas of the Dales National Park or the Nidderdale AONB despite birds being regularly seen in parts of both. It is also clear that when you examine the growth rate of “our” population that it lies somewhere between that of the Chilterns’ birds and the Black Isle indicating that we are almost certainly burdened with a degree of poor breeding pairs ( very unlikely)or persecution, which is sadly much more likely. It is not just Hen Harriers but also almost all raptors are still treated with disdain by some in the shooting community and not just on grouse moors.
As I get Older I have become less and less tolerant of their poor excuses, poorer understanding of ecology, law breaking and bloody lies. I used to think Ian Botham a wonderful cricketer now I just think he’s a twat.
He presented my school colours back in the 1970s and it would be impolite of me to offer my view of him back then, even worse the subsequent ….
Perhaps only a matter of time before someone ‘promotes’ him to Westminster, maybe he’ll bowl a few googlies amidst that circus masquerading as democracy and that could prompt a call for real reform?
What else could he be having eaten so much Shredded Wheat?
Stuart,apart from the northern grouse areas of the Peak,Derbyshire is an excellent county for raptors.High densities of Goshawk Buzzard etc on lowland shooting estates point to a very benign attitude to these birds compared to times past.
I think it will be only a short while before Klte is proven breeding in the county, and becomes a regular and welcome sight .
We have sadly lost another of our red kites within the last couple of weeks which I didn’t want to mention in the blog as it hadn’t been publicised at that point.
That’s 1 less kite that we know of and it didn’t necessarily die where it was found as it could have taken time for it to die.
We’ll already have 1 failed nest if this is part of a breeding pair.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/14446329.Red_kite_shot_dead_dealing_another_blow_to_establishing_bird_of_prey_population_in_region/
I live about 30 miles southwest of the Harewood House reintroduction project in the Huddersfield area. Sightings of Red Kites reported by the Huddersfield Birdwatching Club average out at about a dozen birds per year for the last seven years. It’s a pity they haven’t expanded towards us – I’m not sure why that is.
Hi, I just found this site. I moved to Burnopfield 2 years ago and have a house high on the hill overlooking Rowlands Gill and nearly every day I would see a single kite and sometimes a pair flying past my window over the valley but have not seen one for some time now so was wondering what happened to them. Your article was very interesting but saddening too that people would want to harm these lovely birds. I will keep watching for them and post if I see one.
Cynthia – welcome to the blog. Red Kites are superb birds.
Well, just saw one fly over as I typed the previous message. So pleased to see him, soaring high on the thermals 🙂