Of Kites and Coneheads
UK red kites soar despite European decline - Scotsman.com News
The UK as a whole is now home to 7 per cent of the world's red kites, up from 5 per cent only a year ago.
Populations in Wales and in reintroduction localities in southern and central England are now so large they cannot be counted annually and they are considered "birds of the wider countryside", fully re-established and well able to flourish without further direct conservation intervention.
The kites are approaching the Castle at about ten miles a year, and they are now only ten miles away, so I expect to see them here next year bothering my songbirds and pheasant chicks.
It is refreshing to see a story about conservation which doesn't bang on the climate change drum, though why the spread of Red Kites is seen as a conservation success and the spread of Long-winged Coneheads and the Roesel’s Bush Crickets as harbingers of climate change doom I'm not quite sure.