Only 98 of these were known to produce chicks with a meagre total of 133 young fledged. Brood size was much smaller than in recent years with 66 broods of one chick, 29 broods of two chicks and 3 broods of three chicks. 93 nests were known to have failed completely. The mean productivity was 1.36 chicks per successful nest and 0.69 chicks per nesting attempt. There were at least fifteen extra nests found where the outcome was unknown.

Some 20 - 30 regular sites were not checked, most of these could be presumed to have held breeding pairs.

When compared to the English and Scottish results these are very poor figures (if the Welsh birds had the same success rate and productivity as the north Scotland kites some 462 young would have fledged!).

It was incredibly wet in Wales during most of May and on a few days in June, and this is thought to be the main reason for the poor performance. Only one nest was known to have been robbed but more may have been so. Some 107 chicks were ringed and all but two were also individually colour-ringed using small engraved plastic "Darvics".
In an attempt to estimate the proportion of nests that we failed to find we also sprayed the tips of the central two tail-feathers of most of these chicks bright orange.

By randomly recording the proportion of marked to unmarked juveniles at the feeding stations we should be able to get an estimate of the number of chicks which fledged unmarked and hence get a better idea of the total Welsh population.