A pair of red kites has nested for the past 4 years in a forestry plantation of Scots Pines about 300 yards from my house.  Up to now they have successfully fledged two chicks each year. In 2015 they have three chicks.

 

They were part of a re-introduction of young kites to the North East 8 years ago, starting to breed locally in their second/third years.

A very welcome presence and a spectacular bird in flight, with their contrasting chestnut plumage, forked tail, and effortless circling quarrying flight.

They are relatively unafraid of humans, and unlike buzzards, which keep their distance, will happily circle close overhead.

As I occasionally subsistence feed them bits of chicken wing on the front lawn, I have had to instinctively duck on more than one occasion as they swoop past my head with a very audible “whoosh”

Totally harmless birds, being mainly carrion feeders, taking bits of leftover buzzard kills or any scraps of meat, dead mice etc that they can swoop on and lift.

They are very reticent to remain on the ground, unlike a buzzard which will cloak and eat on the ground for a long period, I have only known kites to remain on a carcass of, for example a dead rabbit, in the severest of winters.

I say mainly carrion eaters, but they occasionally do take live mice & voles, and I believe (though I have never seen it) very, very occasionally, small birds usually naïve newly fledged chicks, many of which would succumb in any case.

Every year the RSPB have the unenviable task of climbing often-spindly thin nest trees in order to tag or ring the chicks before they fledge.