Kites at home

RSPB Scotland Conservation Officer Jenny Weston has spent some time reflecting on when she first joined the RSPB as a red kite officer and shares her more recent stories of spotting red kites while we're all staying close to home.

Kites at home

Increasingly my role seems to be dealing with responses to windfarms and managing datasets, but lockdown has let me reflect back on my life when I first joined RSPB in 2007 as the red kite officer. Summer 2020 could not have contrasted more with those years traversing the countryside keeping tabs on all of the kites with my (then) ever present radio tracking gear. Between 2007 and 2009 we released over a hundred kites and subsequently wing-tagged over 300 of their young in the wild up to 2017 in order to monitor the spread of the population and survival.

Lockdown 2.0 has bought lots of challenges, but if there is one thing that the first lockdown taught us it is the importance enjoying the natural world has for our wellbeing. With snow or freezing temperatures where we live, pretty much since Christmas, it’s been hard going for lots of birds. Like most people, we put seeds out for the garden birds (we have hosted up to 40 brambling this winter), but old habits die hard, so my husband and I frequently stop to move roadkill pheasants and rabbits off road to keep the local raptors well fed (and off the roads too). We regularly get two local pairs of buzzards feasting and occasionally have the odd young kite.

We were delighted in January when we were paid a visit by an adult kite purple/black 8T. From looking up in my sightings database, he was tagged near Torphins (about 10km away) in 2017 and was one of the last kites we wing tagged as part of the project. He hadn’t been seen since fledging so it was a fantastic surprise to see him! I wonder where he has been hiding!

Red kite with blue wing tag reading '8T' on ground

The snow got heavier in February - reaching 48cm in the garden. It seemed that kites were searching further than usual as we had an untagged adult kite come in and then in a blizzard another tagged kite appeared. We got the scope up in the kitchen and to our amazement it was purple/pink 76 who is 12 years old and one of our original released kites (you can see how deep the snow is as only the heads of the ragwort are visible)!

red kite in show with pink wing tag which reads 76

I collected her as a chick from Northamptonshire and she was released in Aberdeenshire in 2009, named Zippy by Alford Primary School. She breeds just by Echt (about 8km to the east of us) and has reared at least 15 young with a 2008 male bird since 2012. It was amazing to see her and felt like an old friend dropping by. She came a couple more times in the heavy snow over the following days and was enjoyed by the whole family – Piper was especially pleased it had a pink wing tag, because it is her favourite colour!

Jenny and Piper using the scope in their kitchen

A few days later we got a message from our friend Xavier Lambin who also regularly puts out food for his local kites. He sent us a picture of a tagged kite in a tree at his house. It was purple/pink 76 again – in the deep snow she had headed another 6km inland to look for food. My husband had seen her about 20 minutes earlier as he cleared the track with a team of neighbours. After several years of no tag sightings, it has been a privilege to see her again, and to get an insight into what many of the kites are doing in the snow. Generally, scavengers like kites, tend to do quite well in harsh weather but dead animals can be covered quickly by snow, so they have to work hard to find them. We’ve had continuous snow cover for some time now and last time this happened we had several birds leave the area and seen at feeding stations further south before returning.

red kite perched on tree in distance

Although we enjoy all the wildlife around our house, the snow has reminded us just how much we love watching our kites in particular. Identifying these “old friends” thanks to their tags, has been fantastic, considering how our own social lives have changed in the last year. The snow is now going so back to enjoying the usual siskins, brambling and robins in the garden with the occasional flyby from a kite. Hopefully it won’t be too long before a kite decides to breed near us.