#RED KITE BIRD SONG TV#
Unfortunately I think the BBC i-player clip is only available to UK TV viewers but the red kites diving for food is something really to behold - they plummet like a stone and spread their wings at the last fraction of a second to swoop and snatch soar. Fortunately they survived in Wales, and Wales alone, and their offspring are now being re-introduced throughout the UK. These birds were once the chief "rat catchers" in medieval London before being hunted to virtual extinction. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding.Here are some beautiful slow motion shots of the majestic red kites - now flourishing in the UK but all from a single breeding pair in Wales.
#RED KITE BIRD SONG FULL#
fasciicauda, but it has been suggested that they are hybrids between Red and Black Kites or more recently (Sibley & Monroe, 1996) that they represent a full species. Two subspecies are accepted, one of them recently extinct :īirds on the Cape Verde Islands have been considered a subspecies of the Red Kite, M. A bird from the Scottish reintroduction programme has wandered to Iceland and vagrants have been recorded in the Channel Islands. The reintroduction programmes in Britain have been highly successful particularly in the Black Isle of Scotland and the Chiltern Hills of England. Red Kites prefer to cross water by the shortest route and appear in small numbers at the major raptor migration watchpoints. Most winter in southern Europe from Spain to Greece or small numbers cross at Gibraltar to winter in North Africa. Birds from the north and east are more migratory but some tend to stay in the breeding area through the winter, especially in recent decades.
Rare and decreasing on the Canary Islands and highly endangered and close to extinction in the Cape Verde Islands.Īll island populations of Red Kites are mainly resident with some dispersal, mainly of immatures, as are birds from Iberia, Wales, France and southern Europe. It is now a very rare bird in North-West Africa where small numbers can still be found in northern Morocco and may possibly still breed in Algeria and Tunisia. In the Mediterranean area Red Kites breed on the Balearics, Corsica and Sardinia and on Sicily and in the southern third of Italy. A few small pockets still survive in Slovakia, Hungary and northern Yugoslavia but it is now very rare in southeast Europe. There is a very isolated resident population in the Caucasus.
The range becomes more continuous from Germany and northern Switzerland east to north Poland and Belarus and south to the northwestern shores of the Black Sea. Outside Iberia populations in mainland Europe are scattered with isolated pockets in central and eastern France, eastern Belgium, Luxembourg and southern parts of the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
Some other introductions have been less successful, with those in northeast England and eastern Scotland particularly badly hit by illegal persecution by shooting estates.
This re-introduction has been very successful in the Chilterns, where they have spread south into Berkshire, and are now (2010) a common sight in the skies over Maidenhead. In Britain it has long been reduced to a tiny remnant population in central Wales but in recent years extensive release programmes have led to breeding once again in parts of Scotland and England and in 2000 more than 400 pairs breeding or attempting to breed in the UK, increasing to over 1,200 pairs by 2011. Confined to the Western Palearctic the Red Kite is found as a breeding species in Iberia and discontinuously from France east to Belarus and the Ukraine.
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