The Red Kite

Red Kite (Milvus milvus) at Chidswell Heybeck 2021

Back from the brink of extinction the red kite has found a home at Chidswell and Heybeck.

A member of the Kites, Hawks and Eagles family it has a reddish-brown body, angled wings and a deeply forked tail.

It was saved from extinction by one of the world’s longest-running protection programmes.

The Red Kite is offered special protection under Schedule 1 of The Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Red Kites are at the top of the food chain and need a strong, healthy and varied landscape as that provides a home for them to live and a home for all the species that they eat such as carrion and worms.

Red Kites like NON-INTENSIVE farmland with enough trees and woods to provide cover and nest sites.

A couple of days prior to egg laying, kites decorate their nest.  The female cares for the young and the male provides food.  Juveniles wander many miles but return as adults to their home area.  Kites can live an average of 10 years but one wild kite lived to be 26 years old.

It is important for the long term survival of the red kite that they continue to receive the goodwill of local people.

Red Kites are here!

Let’s keep a home for the Red Kite here!

Click here to find out more about the red kite on the RSPB website.

Fact sources: RSPB Giving Nature a Home, rspb.org.uk, DVD Guide to British Birds Paul Doherty

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