Building a family home

Kites are monogamous birds, and each pair has only one brood of chicks a year. It is vital that they succeed in raising at least one youngster to the fledging stage. Kites do not start breeding until the second year after they are born. Courtship starts or, in the case of an established pair, resumes in the spring. First, they undergo a pair-bonding ritual, chasing one another acrobatically through the skies above their chosen territory. In early March, they build an untidy nest out of twigs near the top of an oak tree. Having bred successfully once, they will often use the same nest again and again, simply adding more twigs each year to make it larger and more stable. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare famously referred to the kite’s rather odd habit of decorating its nest with manmade objects or, as he calls them, “lesser linen”; a polite way of referring to women’s underwear. Even today, kites continue this custom, stealing items from washing lines or bringing back litter, such as crisp packets, and placing them around the nest. This unusual, though not unique, behaviour may be a way for the birds to strengthen their pair bond. The female usually lays two eggs, white with heavy brown blotches, which she then incubates for just over a month until the chicks hatch. She gets occasional help from her mate. Once the young hatch, both male and female bring back items of food, tearing them into smaller pieces to feed the chicks. Later on, as the chicks grow larger, the female will leave food in the nest so they can feed themselves.