Why are there so many Red Kites in Oxford?
Their reintroduction in the Chiltern Hills has been a huge success story, but their burgeoning numbers could be leading to unforeseen challenges
When you visit Oxford for the first time, something about the local environment takes you by surprise. It is not just the abundance of green space or the network of local waterways, rather two-winged silhouettes that soar high above the city.
Red Kites are birds of prey with a wingspan of around 6 feet, an iconic fanned fork tail and a familiar call that can be heard throughout Oxfordshire. To locals their existence might not seem noteworthy, just as a resident of St Ives might not pay any mind to seagulls or a Londoner to a pigeon.
Recent incidents involving bird strikes at RAF Benson and Kites swooping down to grab food from local residents, however, has brought the topic of their successful reintroduction into greater relief.
Previously lauded, from the 16th Century onwards the raptors began to be seen as a pest. People were rewarded with a bounty for killing them and farmers would either shoot or poison the birds, fearing for farm animals’ wellbeing. The Victorian interest in taxidermy helped add to these pressures and by 1871 the birds were extinct in England.
Their high numbers today in the south of England are thanks to a very successful reintroduction effort in the Chiltern Hills during the early 1990s, by the RSPB and English Nature. Kites taken from Spain were introduced from 1989 to 1994. In 1989, the only Red Kites found in the UK were 52 breeding pairs in Wales. As of 2017, there are approximately 4000 breeding pairs in southern England alone.
It was such a successful reintroduction that conservationists in 2022 sent 15 Red Kite chicks from Northamptonshire back to Spain to help with dwindling numbers there.
Though this reintroduction has been such a success, the issue of Red Kites stealing food from people in Oxfordshire has sparked debate. Their large size and sharp talons make any such incident a frightening prospect. Wallingford is one such place where these incidents have been reported, as Wallingford Town Councillor Steve Holder detailed in November last year:
We have had a few reports where Red Kites have come down to grab a piece of food that somebody is holding in the park.
The issue of bird strike at nearby RAF Benson has been another unexpected issue caused by their strange feeding behaviours. In August last year, Group Captain Christian Royston-Airey detailed to Wallingford Town Council that bird strikes involving Red Kites could cause costly damage to the base’s helicopters.
In response to these incidents the Town Council, with guidance from the Chilterns Conservation Board, started a poster campaign advising local residents not to feed these birds. Although feeding Red Kites in your garden is slightly more spectacular than feeding pigeons, the Conservation Board says it can be unhelpful.
Feeding the birds can lead to them exhibiting bolder behaviour, a particular worry if the birds are being fed in urban areas like Wallingford. It can also disrupt their habitat range, causing them to concentrate in one area which can be bad news for songbirds and ground-nesting birds like Lapwings.
Councillor Holder was keen to emphasise that the Town Council is in no way encouraging the persecution of these birds. Rather their feeding behaviour needs to change for not only the residents’ wellbeing but the birds’ wellbeing too.
The potential reason residents might have been feeding these birds is likely quite innocent, as the Councillor detailed:
Initially when they were first released there was the request to feed the Red Kites, but feeding the birds does seem to have continued.
In neighbouring Berkshire, a research paper found that, from interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011, approximately 4.5% of Reading residents would leave out food for Kites, which amounted to around 4,349 households. They calculated what was left out could potentially feed 142-320 Kites which would be a large proportion of the estimated number of Kites that visited the city each day, approximately 140-440.
Despite the challenges they can bring, the Councillor believes that the bird’s reintroduction has been a great thing for the local area:
When you get people visiting Wallingford on the Thames Path which is a well-used national trail and Wallingford being a centre for lots of history, people that don’t have Red Kite in their home towns or home countries are quite mesmerised by them.
As of the end of November 2023 there have not been any reports of incidents, either by Wallingford residents or RAF Benson.
Despite the challenges reintroducing species can bring about, community action, like that in Wallingford, that prioritises the wellbeing of the species, can help traverse these sometimes choppy waters.