It is becoming ever more difficult for the Southern England Kite Group to locate all breeding pairs and the true population will be somewhat higher than the figures suggest. Work will be carried out during the winter to assess the proportion of young kites in the population that are wing-tagged and this will allow an estimate for the 1999 breeding population to be calculated.

Eight dead kites have been found in England during the last two years with residues of rodenticide in their liver. Kites are at high risk from secondary poisoning by rodenticides as they scavenge on dead rats, many of which will have been poisoned, and this problem may be a factor in slowing the rate of population expansion in southern England. We have produced a factsheet for farmers and landowners in kite areas to highlight this problem and encourage those using rodenticides to search for rats that die out in the open, and burn or bury carcasses so that they are not available to kites.