Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Flying a kite with big raptor projects
The reintroduction of the red kite is billed as a soaraway success, but Soldier Palmer wants to know its impact on other birds and wildlife
Red kites are common again. Once persecuted to the brink of extinction, these birds have enjoyed a tremendous resurgence across the country during the past 20 years, particularly where reintroduction projects have taken place.
Where I live, it’s not uncommon to see 15 birds in the air at once, cruising behind silage mowers or watching for the next spread of slurry to be flung. It’s no more than half an hour’s drive to an official red kite feeding station, where more than
100 kites can be seen diving for scraps of meat at lunchtime.
It’s an extraordinary spectacle and when the birds were still a novelty here, I sometimes took visiting friends for a look. There’s something extraordinarily graceful about that swoop and dive, and the clattering din of wings sounds like a gale-force wind.
Kites were deliberately reintroduced here and the birds rode in on a bow wave of publicity and awareness raising. Conservationists were employed to ‘educate’ farmers and gamekeepers about the impact of raptors and a fair effort was made to troubleshoot conflicts before they arose. Some of this diplomacy was transacted with care and sensitivity, but there are some less constructive stories, too. After all, there was no regional poll or survey to ask if we wanted kites here. As landowners, we simply learned that they were coming. That made it hard to build a reasonable degree of trust from the outset and even the most progressive engagement worked largely on the basis of “kites are coming, but they are not as bad as you think”.
The success of red kites since their reintroduction is plain for all to see. It’s a tremendous conservation success story, but we must measure kites against the reintroduction of other rare or endangered birds.
Although reintroductions are never straightforward, it’s fair to say kites lie on the easy end of the scale. They’re adaptable birds with the ability to eat more or less anything they find lying around. Locally, kites have gone from strength to strength since they were reintroduced in 2001. In that sense, they are an easy win, but I’d be cautious about celebrating this success too long and hard.
Public perception
Using similar techniques to release raptors elsewhere in the country, birds such as white-tailed eagles and golden eagles fared less well. In general terms, they’re doing fine, but their numbers have never exploded.
Further down the food chain, attempts to reintroduce other species such as grouse, partridges and corncrakes run into endless difficulty, and it’s unusual for these birds to persist long after human help is withdrawn. The term ‘reintroduction’ covers a huge variety of projects, but kites have an easier time than most.
In fact, one of the main tasks facing a red kite reintroduction project is public perception. When the birds were introduced here, there were fears they would be persecuted.
There are some big shoots and the conservationists were concerned about conflict. As I remember it, some gamekeepers were hostile to the project at first. Grumbling rose to an audible frustration, but red kites are feeble birds. Any fear that they would kill pheasant poults, as buzzards do, proved to be largely unfounded.
Watch kites flying across open country and it’s clear that they are not well designed to hunt. Instead, they are sneaky snatchers and they are probably far more of a threat to wild game or wading birds that have to expose their youngsters to danger at an earlier age than pheasants going to the wood. Most gamekeepers I know pay red kites little heed these days. It’s telling that many still complain about buzzards, even though where I live the number of these abundant raptors is eclipsed by the number of kites.
Where there are concerns about kites, most relate to their impact on other wildlife. It’s almost bizarre to learn that little monitoring was done before and after red kites were introduced here. We were often told that kites would have no effect on birds and wildlife, but if nobody was looking for any effect, it’s no wonder they didn’t find anything.
Red kite reintroduction is often pitched as a victimless boon, but hard facts are surprisingly scant. That’s frustrating, particularly when most shooting folk are naturalists, too.
Above: Facing page:
We’re often a curious bunch and we like to know how things work. I’m happy to be told that kites do no harm, but I’d prefer to see some evidence.
In reality, it’s obvious that kites cause harm. I asked a local raptor enthusiast why a handful of kites was being so continuously bothered by carrion crows. He replied that kites eat young crows as if they were a delicacy and surprisingly large numbers of crow chicks are stolen from the nest by kites each year. I was thrilled by this information. If you were dithering on how to feel about
“Knowing kites are a significant consumer of crows might tip you in their favour”
kites, knowing they are a potentially significant consumer of crows might tip you in their favour.
The conservationists have been keen to ‘educate’ farmers and gamekeepers from the outset, but this has involved a mixture of carrots and sticks. The key benefit that red kites bring is usually expressed in tourism. Back when there were only a handful of places where you could see red kites, people would travel long distances to watch the birds.
Now they are becoming common, it’s hard to imagine that they still pack a similar bang for their buck. Even if there are no kites where you live, you simply have to search online to find your nearest ones. In this sense, the birds have been so successful that their appeal has been diluted. So much for carrots as a means of purchasing goodwill in the long term.
Silently accepted
The stick is clearly visible, too. Nobody wants to see raptor persecution in the countryside and, in the early days, it was telling how quick conservationists were to threaten keepers and farmers with legal proceedings at the merest mention of poison or disturbance.
Assuming the worst in this way, tensions were probably inflamed by kite workers who operated on the basis that all land managers were out to get raptors. People who might never have dreamed of touching a kite suddenly found themselves undermined by the perception that they were programmed to kill.
When you weigh up the good and bad, the expansion of kites is probably positive, but I wonder if we are thinking clearly about these birds. In many places, they are extremely abundant and that’s a concern at a time of biodiversity collapse when even slight conservation issues can be magnified by unpredictable weather and ever more fragmented habitats. Kites are doing very well, but if farmers and gamekeepers were not ‘educated’ into loving these birds, it’s clear they are being silently accepted.
Perhaps the seed for this resignation was sown by the fact that nobody was asked if they wanted the birds in the first place and everything that’s fallen out since then has been a compromise, grudgingly given.
We weren’t taught to love these birds, nor did we welcome them with a smile. We’ve only learned to tolerate or ignore them over time and, in many cases, that’s pushed us further away from our relationship with nature. It’s yet another example of how conservation of species can often be easy and it’s human beings who bring the complexity.