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Red Kite 23-June-14 G 004
Red Kites:-
This magnificently graceful bird of prey is unmistakable with its reddish-brown body, angled wings and deeply forked tail.
The RSPB is celebrating the "remarkable" comeback of the Red Kite, a bird which had almost become extinct in Britain.
For more than 400 years the bird of prey was killed as vermin and by the 1960s there were just 20 pairs.
But the organisation's 2011 Big Garden Birdwatch survey recorded as many as 2,000 breeding pairs, an increase of over 130% since last year.
Its return began in the 1990s with re-introductions in several areas.
At the turn of the 20th century it was extinct in England and Scotland with just a handful of breeding pairs in the Welsh valleys.
The Welsh birds began to expand slowly in the 1980s with legal protection, reduced persecution and efforts of conservationists, but remained very vulnerable.
Courtesy: RSPB
Red Kite 23-June-14 G 004
Red Kites:-
This magnificently graceful bird of prey is unmistakable with its reddish-brown body, angled wings and deeply forked tail.
The RSPB is celebrating the "remarkable" comeback of the Red Kite, a bird which had almost become extinct in Britain.
For more than 400 years the bird of prey was killed as vermin and by the 1960s there were just 20 pairs.
But the organisation's 2011 Big Garden Birdwatch survey recorded as many as 2,000 breeding pairs, an increase of over 130% since last year.
Its return began in the 1990s with re-introductions in several areas.
At the turn of the 20th century it was extinct in England and Scotland with just a handful of breeding pairs in the Welsh valleys.
The Welsh birds began to expand slowly in the 1980s with legal protection, reduced persecution and efforts of conservationists, but remained very vulnerable.
Courtesy: RSPB