Kites of chaos

It started with an ice cream...

On Saturday, John was the victim of a bungled theft. He was sitting at a bus stop in the small market town of Watlington, waiting to get the local service back into Oxford after a big walk in the Chilterns, and he’d treated himself to a Magnum ice cream. Idly scrolling his phone with one hand, ice cream held in the other, he wasn’t prepared for what happened next. ‘There isn’t very much to tell,’ he says, when I press him for details. ‘It was all very quick - one minute I’m sitting there, the next my Magnum’s on the floor and this bloody kite’s flying away.’

He’s more amused than annoyed. ‘There were talon marks in it!’ he adds, still incredulous that this huge bird of prey tried to snaffle his premium choc ice. Worst of all, the bird instantly dropped it, probably because it quickly realised that what, at first sight, resembled a small rat on a stick was in fact an extremely cold dairy-based snack. Splatted on the pavement, one can only imagine the deep sorrow of the magnum: its life’s purpose unfulfilled, rejected by man and bird, destined to slowly dissolve on a hard slab of concrete. John, on the other hand, seemed to be coping with his loss extremely well. ‘Yeah, I was still the winner here - I just got another one out of the box.’

If John had looked up, he might have seen this

John’s capacity for ice cream aside (as he says, why pay the premium for one when a box of three is not much more?), his experience in Watlington is not unique. In 2011, BBC News Oxford ran a piece entitled ‘Red kites swoop on children eating lunch in Watlington’,¹ which reported residents concerns about birds swooping down on students eating their lunches, ‘hoovering up’ chicks at a farm and perching on prams.

Similar incidents have been reported elsewhere in the Chilterns (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty between Oxford and London). In 2021, Sky News ran the headline, ‘Toddler attacked over custard cream as red kites 'terrorise' Henley-on-Thames’.² According to the same article, kites were ‘snatching hot cross buns from people's hands and steaks from barbecues, [and] residents are concerned the birds are taking over their waterside town.’ In Wallingford, the birds have been seen at the park ‘swooping for scraps and terrorising picnic goers’.³ And the Chiltern Conservation Board has received several complaints about meat ‘dropping directly on to people's heads’,⁴ which is obviously not ideal.

The kites, it seems, are causing pandemonium in middle England. And while John’s experience provides first-hand proof as to the boldness of Watlington’s kites, there’s so much more to this story. I’m not belittling the experiences of people who’ve been too close for comfort to these birds, but the headlines reveal little about what they are like and how they’ve suffered at the hands of man over the last century. The truth is that red kites are one of the UK’s most iconic conservation success stories: one hundred and fifty years ago, they were practically extinct.

***

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on our back doorstep in Oxford, enjoying the strengthening rays on my face and listening to the high-pitched keeeoo of the kites. Squinting up at the sun I could see several of them wheeling around, engaged in pair-bonding displays at the start of the breeding season. One bird would chase and swoop at another, who would twist up to face the protagonist before spinning away and righting itself. These are big birds, with wingspans of six foot and more, and yet they are fantastically graceful. It was truly a joy to watch.

One of the things that I love to think about, when watching wildlife, is how many other people through history might have marvelled at the same scenes. Kites were abundant during medieval times and tolerated in London where they, together with ravens, did a good job of clearing up carrion and other rubbish from the filthy streets. Perhaps a medieval me used to hear their mewing whistles and watch them soar overhead; perhaps she would even take a moment to pause, sit on a step, admire their russet glow and easy acrobatics.

In any case, the harmony wasn’t to last. From the 1600s, unjustified concerns by livestock owners that the birds were taking lambs, together with bounties and egg collecting, saw red kite numbers plummet. By the 1930s, kites were almost extinct in Britain; the exception was a small population in mid-Wales that had somehow clung on in the hilly wilds. In the words of Mike Pienkowski, one of the conservationists involved in saving Britain’s red kites:⁵

The red kite had been common in medieval times. They appear a lot in Shakespeare and they were valued because they kept the streets and villages clean. But attitudes changed in the 1600s. In common with all birds of prey, anything that appeared to be competing with people was exterminated. There was strong pressure from the estates against anything with a hooked beak and talons as they saw them as a threat and were destroying them. The Victorians were impressive in industrialising this sort of thing.

The Welsh population was able to recover thanks to protection from conservationists and daily supplementary feeding at nearby Gigrin farm (which continues to put out meat for red kites, now attracting hundreds of the birds every day⁶). By 1993 there were one hundred breeding pairs. This was not without its problems - only one female had continued to breed successfully during the population bottleneck, so they were inbred.

To increase genetic diversity and encourage a greater spread of birds around the country, other populations were seeded in the Chilterns and in the Scottish highlands. In the Chilterns, billionaire philanthropist Sir John Paul Getty II partnered with the RSPB and English Nature to allow birds to be released on his Wormsley Estate, between Watlington and Stokenchurch. Over the next five years, more birds were released at both sites, as Pienkowski outlined:

In total, 93 were reared and released in the Black Isle from 1989 to 1993, all from Sweden. The same number were reared and released in the Chilterns from 1989 to 1994. These were the four from Sweden in 1989, a total of seven reared from rescued Welsh eggs and 82 from Spain.

It has been a staggering success. Between 1995 and 2020, British red kite numbers have increased by 1,935%, and in 2015 the UK population status was reclassified as green (i.e. out of the danger zone).⁷ Today, an estimated 4,600 pairs call the British Isles their home,⁸ translating into more than 10,000 individuals. Given that the global population is currently estimated at between 60,000-70,000 mature individuals,⁹ the UK is now a stronghold for these birds. It’s a phenomenally rapid achievement, and a testament to the dedication and foresight of the people and organisations involved.

The wannabe ice cream thief, as well as the birds that were swooping and chasing above our house, will be descended from these founder birds, and Wormsley estate is still a hotspot for seeing kites. Drivers headed to or from London on the M40 motorway (which runs through the Chilterns), are also treated to the spectacle of the birds soaring and swooping over the carriageways - something that I find wholly distracting, but I’ve checked and there don’t seem to have been any car accidents caused by red kite distraction. Or perhaps nobody has admitted it.

In a remarkable twist, the population in the UK is now so stable that, in 2022, thirty birds from England were flown back to Spain and reintroduced to help support their dwindling population.¹⁰ It’s a phenomenal achievement and shows that British red kites are definitely here to stay.

***

Sadly, as humanity takes over more of the natural world, and as people become less connected with nature, the outcome of a species actually starting to do well is almost certainly going to be conflict. We’re becoming used to species going into decline, sliding out of our consciousness and out of existence, but populations increasing is a whole other ball game. We’re not used to large raptors swooping down to steal ice creams or custard creams, and it’s not something to be encouraged - nobody wants to be scratched or scared, and this isn’t the sort of food the animals need.

And yet, as is the case for pigeons, gulls, rats, foxes and any other of the ‘nuisance’ animals we don’t want living alongside us, we do encourage them. For the most part it’s indirect: our towns and cities might not be as filthy as medieval London, but there’s still enough carrion and rubbish for any animal that is opportunistic enough to survive, if not thrive. Why wouldn’t they take advantage of this? But there’s been direct encouragement too, in the form of people putting out food to attract the birds. When they were first introduced to the Chilterns this was recommended, as it had been in Wales, but it’s not been necessary for some time. Yet, the photogenic splendour of red kites and the potential thrill of having these giants swoop down into one’s garden is too much of a draw for some people. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Supplementary feeding, as you can see from this video of Gigrin Farm, can draw hundreds of birds to an area, and while these numbers result from a daily operation that’s been going for many years (and is specifically designed to be a wildlife spectacle, raising money for conservation and educating people), when people bait their gardens similar things will happen. Birds will be attracted to the area, lured by the prospect of an easy meal, and by visiting repeatedly they will start to lose their fear of people. This is great for taking close-up photos, but bad in pretty much every other sense, and particularly when it causes unnecessary human-wildlife conflict.

Conservation organisations and local authorities are now running campaigns to try and discourage red kite feeding, which is apparently ‘rife’ in the Chilterns.¹¹ The Chilterns Conservation Board, for example, lists six reasons on its website not to feed red kites, stating that ‘If the birds become a nuisance this could change public support for the welfare of these birds. We don’t want public perception to move us back down the road towards the persecution of red kites.’¹² Hopefully it works. It’s a wonderful thing to see and hear red kites in the countryside, and a conservation success that deserves so much celebration. But we must strike the right balance with these birds, for the good of them and us (and our ice creams).

---

Some interesting things

Just two today, and also you may notice that I changed the name - Facts of the Fortnight sounded a bit too chintzy gameshow, and really all these are meant to be are some interesting things. So there you go.

• I had a chat with Prof. Kay Holekamp last week about her decades-long research with spotted hyenas, and one of the facts she told me blew my mind. Apparently, a group of hyenas can make an entire zebra disappear in 13 minutes. That’s the record that she and her team have timed, and when she says disappear, she means it - hyenas have a bite force that allows them to chomp down on bones with no problem, and they’re capable of guzzling one-third of their own body weight in one sitting.

• Did you know that the star-nosed mole is the fastest eating mammal? It can find, identify and consume a food item in as little as 120 milliseconds, eat 15% of its body weight in just 10 minutes and, more astonishingly, start pooping out ingested food particles in as little as 8 minutes. Refs here and here, and in the latter is also this delightful representation of the star-nosed moleunculus, which is equal parts terrifying and incredible (if you’ve not seen the human sensory homunculus look here)!

  

---

#NaturePhotoADay

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see that late on New Year’s Day I decided to set myself the challenge of starting a nature related Project365 (this year, #Project366), meaning I have committed to sharing one nature photo every day for the whole of 2024. Here, I share my favourite from the last two weeks, and this time I needed to share these brand new bees getting their first glimpses of the world. These are red mason bees, and they’re hatching out from the hollow tubes of our bee hotels where their mother laid them as eggs last spring. Females lay a single egg inside the tubes (which mimic hollow stems or other natural cavities), deposit a load of pollen with it, and then seal it up with mud in a little ‘cell’. She then does the same thing over and over until the tube is full; she then caps it off with a good thick layer of muddy cement, keeping everything inside safe and dry while they develop. Come spring, the babies are fully developed and ready to fly! Males are laid closest to the exit and they emerge first, feeding, fighting and then hanging around the openings until the females are ready to come out and mate. And then the whole thing starts again. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Thank you so much for reading my newsletter! If you enjoyed this one, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with others who might be interested and/or restacked it on the Substack platform. And if you’re not already subscribed, it is free to do so and means these will come straight to your inbox.

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-13614326

2. https://news.sky.com/story/toddler-attacked-over-custard-cream-as-red-kites-terrorise-henley-on-thames-12316757

3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66360726.amp

4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-61547644

5. https://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/literature/179410/how-we-restored-red-kite-in-britain-30-years-ago.html

6. https://gigrin.co.uk/

7. https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/birdfacts/red-kite

8. https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/red-kite

9. https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/red-kite-milvus-milvus/text

10. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61903943

11. https://www.birdguides.com/news/dont-feed-red-kites-warns-rspb/

12. https://www.chilterns.org.uk/our-landscape/nature-wildlife/red-kites/