Red kite

Red kites mostly eat animals that are already dead.

They also catch worms, mice and small birds.

Red kites have fairly weak talons for a bird of prey, so they mostly eat carrion: animals that are already dead. They often soar over roads, looking for animals hit by cars.

They also catch small mammals such as mice, voles and rabbits, small birds and insects, and they eat a lot of earthworms. In some places in the United Kingdom, people put out meat in their gardens to bring red kites close.

IUCN describes a wide diet based mainly on carrion and small to medium-sized mammals and birds, with reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates less important. The RSPB notes that the red kite's talons are relatively weak compared with many other birds of prey, so it mainly feeds on carrion and is often seen soaring over roads looking for roadkill; it also takes worms, small mammals and birds.

The Peregrine Fund lists rabbits, mice, shrews and voles, small birds, insects (grasshoppers, beetles, ants, moths and crane flies) and earthworms, which can make up a good part of the diet. IUCN adds that landfill sites managed in certain ways, and plenty of roadkill, may affect how much kites move around, and that fewer rubbish dumps have been linked to declines in France and Spain.

Listen to the sound at the start of this page.

It is a real red kite calling in Switzerland.

At the start of this page you can play a real recording of a red kite. It was made near Niederried bei Kallnach, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, in January 2020, and shared on xeno-canto, a website where people share recordings of wild birds.

The RSPB describes the red kite's call as a whistling 'peee-eooo-eooo'.

The recording on this page is xeno-canto XC518958 by Pascal Christe, labeled as an adult red kite. It was made at Niederried bei Kallnach (Aarberg district, canton of Bern, Switzerland), at 460 meters, on 10 January 2020; the recordist saw the bird and did not use playback.

The RSPB calls the red kite's characteristic call a whistling 'peee eooo eooo', and the British Trust for Ornithology's species page separates call, alarm call and flight call.

Long ago, red kites lived in towns in Britain.

Then people killed so many that they almost disappeared. Now red kites are back!

About 400 years ago, red kites were common in British towns and cities, where they cleaned up scraps of meat from the streets. Later, people began to persecute them, killing them on purpose. By the end of the 1800s they were gone from England, Scotland and Ireland, and only a few pairs were left in Wales.

Local people protected the Welsh kites, and from 1989 kites were released in England and Scotland. The RSPB says the number of red kites in the United Kingdom grew by 2,464% between 1995 and 2023.

The RSPB says that in Shakespeare's day red kites were common even in cities, catching rodents and scavenging scraps of meat in the streets, until persecution made them extinct in Scotland, England and Ireland by the end of the 19th century. The British Trust for Ornithology reports that fewer than ten breeding pairs remained in mid Wales by the 1930s and 1940s; under a local 'Kite Committee' of conservationists and landowners, the Welsh population rose to 100 pairs by 1993, most of them descended from a single female.

Releases began in 1989 in the Chilterns and on the Black Isle, followed by other English and Scottish sites and, in 2008, County Down in Northern Ireland. The RSPB reports a 2,464% increase in the UK population between 1995 and 2023, and says the UK now holds about 13% of the world's red kites.

There are more red kites now than there were before.

But poison is still a danger to them in some places.

The red kite is listed as Least Concern. It used to be listed as Near Threatened, but its numbers have grown in most countries, helped by protection and by bringing kites back to places they had been lost from. Experts estimated about 60,000 to 70,000 grown-up red kites in 2020.

It is still in danger in some places. Kites can be poisoned when people put out poison for foxes or crows, or when they eat rodents killed with poison. Wind turbines and power lines are also a danger.

BirdLife International assessed Milvus milvus as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 17 August 2020, published 2020). It was previously Near Threatened because of a suspected moderately rapid decline, but increases in most range countries mean the global population has grown by more than 30% over three generations; the 2020 estimate is 60,000 to 70,000 mature individuals (about 35,000 pairs), up from 21,000 to 25,000 pairs reported in 2009.

In 2020, IUCN reported that declines were continuing in southern Spain, Portugal and locally in Germany and perhaps France. It names illegal poisoning aimed at livestock and game predators, secondary poisoning from rodenticides and other pesticides, especially in French and Spanish wintering areas, as the greatest threat, with wind turbines a potentially serious one and electrocution, power-line collisions, hunting, road traffic and loss of grassland as others. Reintroductions have brought kites back to large parts of the United Kingdom since 1989 and, since 2007, to Tuscany and Marche in Italy and to Ireland.