It’s raining meat as overfed red kites fumble takeaways

FEEDING the birds has given rise to a new menace as lumps of uncooked meat have begun to drop earthwards on to unsuspecting heads.

The hazard stalking the Chilterns is considered so severe that residents have been told to stop treating red kites to tasty morsels.

The birds are thriving after being reintroduced to the area in the 1990s – not least because members of the public have taken to feeding them.

“Some people,” said the Chiltern Conservation Board (CCB) in a statement, “like to feed red kites meat in their gardens to attract large numbers – the birds make dramatic swoops to feed. While this is an impressive spectacle, the [CCB] discourages feeding red kites.”

One reason is that they are prone to dropping their catch. The CCB has reportedly received complaints of scraps of meat hitting people.

The CCB also warned that feeding encourages red kites to become braver. In Marlow, Bucks, a red kite scratched a child on the head while swooping down to steal sandwiches. “Like seagulls, they only gain such boldness when people feed them,” said the CCB.

Feeding discourages red kites from expanding their range, the CCB warned, and does not present the birds with a healthy diet. Meanwhile, dropped meat encourages vermin, and although red kites are more scavengers than predators, a concentration of them discourages songbirds and ground nesting birds from feeding and successfully bringing up their young.

Conservationists fear that bad behaviour by red kites – enabled by inadvisable feeding from humans – will cause public opinion to turn, once again, against the birds. Owing to the misconception that they were able to kill lambs and pheasants, red kites were hunted almost to extinction in the Victorian era.

A red kite is, says the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, “unmistakable with its reddish-brown body, angled wings and deeply forked tail”.

There are an estimated 4,600 pairs of them in the country. Although they tend to weigh little more than 2lb, their wingspan can be almost two metres.