Its special significance to Mid Wales is well understood by local businesses and it has become the leading corporate logo for the area. From time immemorial this spectacular bird of prey has soared over the hills and valleys of Mid-Wales but its survival here has, until recently, been a matter of great concern.
Until some 200 years ago the Red Kite was a common British bird to be seen almost anywhere in the country, from the remote hills of Scotland in the north to the streets of London in the south; but then, in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the numbers were drastically reduced.
Improvements in hygiene in towns and cities eliminated carrion as a ready source of food, and the establishment of game preserves for pheasants and rabbits meant that predatory animals and birds were no longer tolerated as legitimate components of our native wildlife but viewed as vermin; thus kites were simultaneously starved out of towns, and shot or poisoned in the countryside.
England and then Scotland were cleared of kites in this way; a few birds lingered in eastern England (Lincoln) until about 1870 and the last birds in England probably bred near Ludlow, Shropshire in the 1870s.
The last of the Scottish birds disappeared by about 1890. By this time the Welsh population had been reduced to a small remnant in the hills of central Wales. Local naturalists watched in dismay as the last few kites were either robbed of their eggs or were shot - to be skinned and mounted in glass cases.
Two local men endeavoured to save the kite from almost certain extinction. In Brecon, E. Cambridge Philips lobbied landowners and organised the payment of bounties as a means of protecting nests in the 1880s and 1890s, but his efforts were ultimately ineffective.
A few years later (1903) Dr. J. H. Salter, Professor of Botany at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth persuaded the British Ornithologists Club to set up a Kite Committee to organise the protection of the few remaining kites, in the `last refuge' of the kite in the upper Tywi Valley, through the appointment of paid local nest watchers.
Despite these efforts the decline in numbers appears to have continued, probably reaching an all-time low in the 1930s when the population fell below 20 birds, and most of these were unable to rear young. In fact recent work on kite genetics has suggested that during the low-point only a single femaleÎs offspring survived to raise young. Not surprisingly, numbers increased very slowly in the 1940s and 1950s, helped no doubt by the reduction of persecution during the war years, so that by 1960 there were some 30 or so kites resident in Wales.
In about 1970, an immigrant female Red Kite from central Europe joined the Welsh breeding population - detected by genetic research on blood samples taken from Welsh kite chicks - and added a new bloodline. With further protection and invaluable help from the farmers on whose land the kites nested, numbers continued to recover so that by 1993, after experiencing a dramatic increase in breeding success over the preceding 4 or 5 years, the Welsh breeding population exceeded 100 breeding pairs.
By 2000, the Welsh countryside supported an estimated 260 breeding pairs - representing almost 1,000 individual birds, including juveniles. If this encouraging trend can be maintained, the kite has an assured future, and after so many years of constant effort by so many, we can afford to be cautiously optimistic. But we must also remain vigilant.
There are still serious problems affecting our Welsh population. In particular some kites still fall victim not only to the deliberate and illegal use of poison baits (usually set for crows and foxes in the lambing season), but also by consuming dead or dying rodents legitimately poisoned by the new generation of very potent rodenticides (secondary poisoning). Egg collecting and disturbance by visitors cause additional nest losses.
Not all the problems are man-made; uncontrollable natural disasters also occur especially in relation to our unpredictable weather. Many chicks can be, and are lost during prolonged or heavy rainfall at hatching time. In 1993 heavy rains and gale force winds in June killed large chicks in at least thirteen nests in a matter of a few days.
In the mid - 1980s there was some concern that the growth and range expansion of the Welsh Kite population was too slow, and that there was unlikely to be a natural re-colonisation of its former haunts in Britain within a reasonable time. There were also worries that the small and isolated nature of the Welsh population left it vulnerable to unforeseen disasters, such as disease.
The RSPB and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee therefore initiated the re-introduction of kites at two separate locations - one in southeastern England the other in north Scotland - using Red Kites of Spanish and Swedish origin respectively. These re-introductions began in 1989 and have since successfully re-established breeding populations at both localities. Equally successful releases have since been undertaken at other sites in both countries, so that by 2000 England could boast 132 breeding pairs, and Scotland 39 pairs.
The Welsh population however remains the only native British stock.
