[oor wullie]

One of the things that gives me great joy is watching the red kites.  They often hang about on our land and I always stop to watch, especially when they are circling so low you could just about reach up and touch them.
It seems that the week before last someone (about 20 miles away) has been poising them

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/thirteen-birds-of-prey-poisoned-within-two-miles-1-3357544

9 kites and a handful of buzzards found so far and I think it is safe to say that for every dead bird found there will be another one or 2 that are never found.

I hadn't seen any this week and was starting to get a bit worried but one turned up yesterday and again today.  Hopefully it has not lost its mate.

In my wildest imagination I can't think of a suitable punishment for the perpetrator.

I have heard it said that the only safe eagles in this part of the world are the 2 stone ones on someones gateposts a few miles along the road.  Depressing.
 

[Mammyshaz]

Just don't understand people ( if you can call them that  ) who are able to live with such a guilty conscience after doing that to such wonderful wildlife.
Our local swans are lost to target shooters on a yearly basis. Lost mother and several cygnets 2 years ago, so sad 

Hope your local kites make a good recovery

[Rosemary]

Are kites any danger to farmers or keepers? I thought they were carrion eaters - and not very big.

I saw them at the Red Kite Centre outside Doune - dozens of them. Fabulous 

[SallyintNorth]

Red kite are huge - much bigger than buzzards - and sobeautiful.  :hugkite:  (I know we don't have a hug-a-kite icon but I live in hope )   Yes, I think they eat carrion.

However... when you are lambing, and crows, buzzards and other birds are flying about frightening your ewes, and pecking the eyes and tongues out of any lambs taking a long time to be born... well I do not of course condone shooting a protected species but I maybe can understand why some might want to.

There are also a lot of gamekeepers and lovers of other birds who get upset about the number of eggs and young chicks taken by the ariel predators.  It's an issue in my area with hen harriers, terribly low on numbers but which - so they say - will predate young grouse chicks.  Most of the country folk I know want everything in moderation - but if the predator numbers get high then the smaller birds, especially ground-nesting birds, will take a pounding.

Whether a red kite only ever takes anything that is already dead, I wouldn't know...

[oor wullie]

I have never seen a kite going for anything other than carrion.  They certainly don't bother our chickens (which are completely free range) even when the hens had chicks running about.

I suspect that they were not the target but that a keeper was trying to poison something else (like eagles!).

There are some estates that take the attitude that anything that is not a grouse should be wiped out.  I know of one estate in Angus that has shot, not just the predators (foxes, stoats, eagles, buzzards) but also killed every last blue hare and deer because all that matters is grouse numbers.

[northern crofter]

Sickening. We live right in the heart of the Red Kite population on the Black isle, just a couple of miles from where all the carcasses are turning up.
They use our ground and the surrounding woods every day and are nothing short of beautiful. We have a few pheasants and grouse who inhabit out field (mainly hoovering up the spilled bird seed from the bird tables) and i have not seen any grief between them and the Kites.

Fingers crossed the perpetrators will be caught and dealt with in an appropriate manner, there really are some unscrupulous folk out there.

[Ideation]

It's funny how someone gets in so much trouble for killing a buzzard.

And yet no one even notices when a farmer flails a hedge during nesting season.

[in the hills]

We attended a talk by RSPB on red kites. Although large they are apparently not physically very strong. Also beak is not powerful. Eat carrion. Cannot carry off a carcass and beak not powerful enough to open the carcass but rely on other carrion feeders doing that first. They said they were no threat to poultry or stock.

A pair nested about a mile from here for the first time last year. Raised 2 or 3 young.

In the winter we spotted 9  kites circling above. Always a lot around now. A couple of farmers have said they believe they will become a problem here as numbers get higher. Right in the middle of a huge shoot so lots of pheasant casualties on the lane to feed them at certain times of the year but then probably leaner at other times. I know the keepers aren't 'keen' on all the buzzards so guessing they won't like too many kites around.

They are very impressive birds. 

[Ideation]

I'm a keeper and we have both kites and buzzards on our estate, a long with Goshawks and all the others. . . .

Now I quite like the kites, and have never really noticed much of a problem with them, although they are in quite small numbers. . . . . .

The Buzzards however are in plague proportions and genuinely cause a massive headache, killing lots and lots of young pheasant poults.

Now the RSPB say that both are carrion eaters and buzzards only kill worms. . . . .

Well, I know thats a blatant lie with regard to buzzards, so perhaps the same with kites?

Thing is, how much carrion is really around to sustain a large population of large birds of prey?

[in the hills]

Well I think that's the concern here. Lots and I mean lots of road kill at certain times but this dwindles as the shooting season progresses.

Personally never seen a buzzard take anything but a couple of local poultry keepers told me that they actually witnessed a buzzard take their hens .... though they were light breeds. It was also a hard winter.

We had what were probably young buzzards sitting watching our hens for a while a year or so ago. They didn't take any but gamekeepers wife said she'd watched them take the poults (the size of our light fowl) from the field behind her cottage.

We will see. If they get hungry .....