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As part of the project, we decided early on that we really wanted members of the public and schools to name our red kites.  As each bird is given uniquely numbered, coloured wing tags and carries a radio transmitter, it is possible to track birds and provide updates to the organisations and individuals about their very own kite, and how it is doing in the wild. 

As well as an open competition for some of the birds’ names, we have also allocated birds to be named by some of our sponsors and the volunteers who worked so hard to make the pens ready for the birds.  Aberdeen Countryside Project, who have contributed £45,000 and hundreds of hours of volunteer time to the project, have named bird 07 Phoenix.  Ellon Wildlife Explorer Group have recently won WEX group of the year and their prize was to name bird 08; they chose Ellen.  Bird 13 is called Treekid (an anagram of red kite) and was named by local RSPB staff members.  We received five birds from Central Scotland, some of which came from the land around Argaty Red Kites feeding station.  Lynn and Niall Bowser have named one of these kites Annie Hope after Annie Hope Henderson who bought Argaty and loved the wildlife of it.  We are also delighted to have the support of Grampian Police force and following the release of some of the kites by Assistant Chief Constable Ewan Stewart the force named bird 29 Big Tam after an officer who passed away earlier this year.

We’ve had some fantastic names suggested so far and are waiting another couple of weeks before making our decision on the names for the two or three birds being named by the public.  If you would like to make a suggestion then please email us at: aberdeenredkites@rspb.org.uk.

We released the last of the kites a little over a week ago, so now my days are taken up with following the kites as they explore the local landscape. We released the kites in six batches; partly due to the variation in the ages of the birds and partly so I could follow the birds into roost on their first night of release. The major upshot of this was that a lot of the many people that have been involved with the project were able to see birds flying free for the first time. 

The hatch was opened last Monday for the final time by our regional director Martin Auld and Lynn Bowser from Argaty, near Doune. Lynn and her family run a feeding station for red kites and the some of the chicks that she released came from their land. Lynn had been out at the nests when I collected the chicks from Central Scotland back in June – the kites and us have come a long way since then!

At the moment we are putting a small amount of food on top of the pens, just whilst the birds are finding their feet.  Completely naturally, the birds are foraging for themselves.  I’ve watched them hunting and digging for worms in a freshly cut silage field near the pens, so they are relying less and less on us.  Most of the kites seem to forage a few miles away from the pens and come back to roost close to the release site at night.

Our oldest birds have been flying free for nearly a month, and seem to be getting more adventurous.  We were all astonished how strongly they flew out initially In the first few days after release you could see them learning to manoeuvre and become the skilled acrobats that they are famed to be. 

I’m trying not to be the mother who doesn’t want her kids to leave home; after an exhaustive summer none of us can wait to see where the Aberdeen Red Kites turn up.  These birds are more than capable of travelling all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, and potentially onto the continent.  This is the brilliance of wing-tags; individuals are easily recognisable all over the world.  Seeing the birds over my ‘local patch’, however, makes all the hard work put in already and still to come more than worth it!