Nature · Birds

Red kite

Resident · wingspan 175–195 cm

Milvus milvus — Accipitridae (hawks, kites and harriers)

A rust-red scavenging raptor with a deeply forked tail that it twists constantly like a rudder. Persecuted to extinction in England by 1871 and Scotland by 1879, it survived in Britain only as a handful of pairs in mid-Wales, all descended from a single female. Reintroductions from 1989 in the Chilterns and on the Black Isle have made it one of the great conservation successes, and it is now Green-listed.

How to spot them

▸Deeply forked rufous tail, twisted and flexed constantly in flight — the buzzard's tail is short and rounded
▸Long, angular, bowed wings with bold pale windows on the underside of the primaries
▸Buoyant, rocking flight; rich rust body and pale grey head
▸Mewing, whinnying call, higher and more drawn-out than a buzzard's
▸Often in loose gatherings over roads and feeding stations, scavenging carrion

How to know it

A deeply forked rufous tail, twisted and flexed like a rudder as the bird rocks buoyantly over a motorway

Red kite — the forked tail is the mark that separates it from the buzzard.

Reduced in Britain to a few pairs in mid-Wales, all descended from a single female

Red kite — persecuted to extinction in England by 1871 and Scotland by 1879.

Reintroduced in 1989 to the Chilterns and the Black Isle using Spanish and Swedish birds

Red kite — later releases in Northamptonshire, Yorkshire, Gateshead, Dumfries and Galloway, Aberdeen, County Down and Cumbria.

Protected in medieval London as a street scavenger, later listed as vermin under the Tudor acts

Red kite — the bird Shakespeare's Autolycus warns the 'kites and ravens' about.

Mainly a carrion feeder, and unusual among raptors in decorating its nest with rags, paper and plastic

Red kite — Shakespeare's 'my linen' thief in The Winter's Tale is a kite.

Recovered so completely that it moved off the UK Red List to the Green list, with the UK holding around 13% of the world population

Red kite — Birds of Conservation Concern 5.

Its Black Isle population grew far more slowly than the Chilterns birds because of illegal poisoning

Red kite — the comparison is a textbook demonstration of persecution suppressing a raptor.

Quick-fire facts

•Scientific name Milvus milvus, simply 'kite kite'
•BTO BirdFacts gives about 4,400 breeding pairs (2016 estimate); the species is now too numerous for the Rare Breeding Birds Panel to track, and there has been no recent national survey, so current totals of 6,000-plus pairs are estimates
•The RSPB describes an increase of about 2,464% between 1995 and 2023, and says the UK now holds roughly 13% of the world population
•Green-listed in Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (2021), having recovered off the Red List, but still on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
•The Welsh remnant of fewer than ten pairs in the 1930s–40s was shown by genetic work to descend from a single female
•The founding reintroductions were in 1989 in the Chilterns (Buckinghamshire) and on the Black Isle (Highland), running to 1994
•Later releases: Northamptonshire 1995, central Scotland 1996, Yorkshire 1999, Dumfries and Galloway 2001, Gateshead 2004, Aberdeen 2007, County Down 2008 and Cumbria 2011
•Kites scavenged the streets of medieval London and were protected by royal decree, then classed as vermin under the Tudor 'Acts for the Preservation of Grayne'
•It lines its nest with rags and scraps — the habit behind Shakespeare's line in The Winter's Tale about kites building with 'lesser linen'

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources

RSPB — Red Kite
British Trust for Ornithology — BirdFacts: Red Kite