Tollie Red Kites

My friend volunteers with the RSPB’s Tollie Red Kite nature reserve so she took us to watch the daily feed. It was really cool to see these birds as they’re not very common in the UK, so I had only ever seen them in Germany. I wish I could have gotten some better pictures, but this is about as good as my camera can do at a distance.


Red kites are classed as “near threatened” by the IUCN red list, suffering from persecution by livestock owners. Large birds that hunt and scavenge around farmland, they are often assumed to be a threat to lambs, however, they are fairly weak and can’t really tackle prey larger than a rabbit. In fact, one of their more common prey items is earthworms!
By the 1980s they had completely gone from Scotland and England, with only a failing population left in Wales. These birds are a result of a reintroduction program that used birds from Sweden, Spain and Germany to start populations across the UK, with the hope being that they would meet up as the populations grew and expanded. Some of these populations have done really well, but the Inverness population has only increased to a small fraction of what was hoped. This is likely due to continuing persecution.



At Tollie they feed the Red kites (and some opportunistic seagulls) a small amount of red meat every day, not enough for them to be totally reliant but enough to get them through hard times. This is especially valuable in the depths of winter, when their usual prey is harder to find. 
Feeding the Red kites is also a great way to show the general public that they exist and provides a great education opportunity. If you’re ever in the area I highly recommend going, the feeds are at 2.30pm in the summer time and changes to 1.30pm when the clocks change over. 
If you want to read more about Tollie and see some non-blurry photos of some Red kites then check out my friend’s blog post about Tollie 
Sources 

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