Red kites are returning in numbers that naturalists could only have dreamed of 30 years ago. Dr Mike Pienkowski has chronicled the extraordinary success story of how they were brought back from the brink of extinction — and he shared with us five of the best places to see these beautiful birds of prey.
In the Middle Ages, the red kite flourished. The forked-tailed, diurnal bird of prey enjoyed a happy working relationship with humans — keeping cities reasonably clean by scavenging on the refuse that littered the streets — and benefited from some of the first protective legislation in Britain (killing a kite was punishable by death).
However, 1457 signalled the decline of the species, when James II of Scotland decreed that kites and other predatory birds should be destroyed. Later, vermin laws ensured the kite would be subject to relentless persecution and, by the 1930s, only one breeding pair survived in the remote hills of mid Wales. By the 1980s, the birds were one of three globally endangered species in the UK.
A pioneering reintroduction project began in 1987 — with imported birds released two years later — to restore the raptor to its former glory. In 2020, 30 years after the start of the scheme, it was hailed by the RSPB as the ‘biggest species success story in UK conservation history’.
Now established and self-supporting, the kite population has spread throughout Britain, expanding as far as Ireland and the Isle of Man. When The Kite Builds (£29.95, www.ukotcf.org.uk), a new book written by Dr Mike Pienkowski (chairman of the Red Kite Project Team from its establishment to 1995 and current chairman of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum), documents this reintroduction of red kites to England and Scotland, revealing why and how we brought these charismatic birds of prey back from the brink of extinction.
Dr Mike Pienkowski has spent years helping red kites reestablish themselves in Britain.
For those wishing to spot a red kite for themselves, there is good news.
‘They are becoming more visible everywhere in Britain, in areas of mixed farmland (and even towns) over which they search for food and patches of tall woodland where they next,’ says Dr Pienkowski. By this point of the year they’ll be likely to be looking for — — or have recently found — the nesting sites, where they will lay eggs in the coming weeks. And visibility is good at the moment, he adds, since the majority of deciduous trees are yet regain their leaves.
As for the best places to go? There are centres in Yorkshire, Durham and Aberdeen, but Dr Pienkowski suggests the following five areas in particular:
- The Chilterns, centred on Stokenchurch and the Chilterns AONB
- Central Wales, centred on Rhayader
- North Northamptonshire, between Peterborough and Corby
- The Black Isle and Dingwall area, north of Inverness
- Argaty Red Kites, Doune, Perthshire
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