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A rather belated blog this time!  In the weeks since our last posting, much has happened with the Aberdeen Red Kites.  After a final flourish of growing all of the birds had their radio transmitters fitted and were released by the 1 August.  We had lots of great press coverage of this year's releases, with fantastic pictures in the local papers.  The birds themselves aren't too bothered by the media interest, and all flew away from their cages with the graceful strong flight we have become accustomed to.

Most birds have remained fairly local; some still coming into the food we have been putting out, while others have been joining up with last year's birds and integrating well to the Aberdeen population.

Next blog will be a bit of an update on last year's birds, with old favorites like Millie and Stinky Pete!  In the mean time if you are lucky enough to see one of the Aberdeen Red Kites we would love to here about it at aberdeenredkites@rspb.org.uk or through the comments pages.

We've now had some of the red kite chicks for six weeks, so we're getting ready to let them go.  They've all pretty much finished growing and although they weigh the same as when they arrived, their wingspans' are an impressive 5ft!  All of the kites are spending their days sunning themselves and making practice flights around the cages.  They get very excited when one of last year's released birds flies over and they start to calling to eachother. 

Now their tails are finishing growing the radio transmitters can be attached and they are ready for the off.  One thing's for sure it won't be long before they are joining the other wild Aberdeen red kites!

Now we have the full batch of this years kite chicks we're getting into the swing of getting all of their food ready.  This year the chicks are mainly being fed on grey squirrels that the Forestry Commission are trapping around Aberdeen. They are perfect kite sized meals, but it takes a bit of time preparing 25-30 every day.  So I'm glad we have star volunteer Ewan who is a wiz at squirrel preparation!
 
Apart from that the cages are getting a bit stinky as young kite chicks aren't really the best tenants!  The CCTV cameras are keeping an eye on the cages for us in between our twice daily visits.  Its really important that the birds remain undisturbed for the next few weeks to give them the best possible chance once released.  Just think how many squirrels we have to get through before then though!

Following several hundred miles of driving, all of this year chicks have made it safely to Aberdeen.  Last week Alister from Aberdeen Countryside Project and I headed to the Chilterns to pick up the 20 birds that they had collected.  They had been looked after really well by Helen Olive over the last fortnight.  After an early set-off on Friday we called in to Northamptonshire to pick up the 10 chicks that they had collected.  Fully loaded with 30 chicks safe in their SkyKennels we made it back to Aberdeen in the evening.  Joining the 5 birds already collected from Central Scotland all enjoyed their first Scottish meal of grey squirrel.
 
All birds look in good condition and it won't be long at all before they're ready for the off in about six weeks.  At the moment though its off to get more food ready for all those hungry mouths!

The last couple of weeks have been tinged with sadness for the Aberdeen Red Kite team. While so many of last years chicks are finding their wings and spreading out across the countryside we had our first known death. A kite was hit on the road by a coach near Aberdeen and sadly died. It was kite 05 named Advokite by local law firm Raeburn Christie Clark & Wallace. As scavengers they will naturally feed on road kill and as a result road traffic accidents are one of the most common causes of death. Although this has been a sad event, it is remarkable that this is our first death. We have had an incredibly high survival rate for the first year of the project which shows how fantastic the area around Aberdeen is for red kites.

 On a happier note this year's batch of red kite chicks will be arriving soon so we're busy making preparations for another busy summer!

Previous blogs have mentioned the movements of the Aberdeen Red Kites, all of which have been really fascinating.  This time though it's the turn of Rua and Annie Hope.  
 
Myself and Ian Francis (Grampian Area Manager) headed off down to Dumfries and Galloway last weekend to find out more about the red kite reintroduction that began in 2001 and hopefully to see the two of the Aberdeen birds that have been over-wintering there. 

We had a fantastic guided tour of the Galloway Kite Trail by our D&G counterparts.  First stop was the Feeding Station by Laurieston.  This is where Rua (26) has been hanging out all winter and we could see why.  Around 40 kites came into feed on the snacks of meat put out.  It was a fantastic spectacle - well worth a visit if you're in the area! 

Rua came into feed at about 2.30 pm and I was able to read his wing tags with binoculars.  This fantastic picture of Rua was taken by Steven Ross at the feeding station.  He was collected in June last year from the Black Isle with BBC Landward filming us, and they gave him his name - which means red in Gaelic.  We did the rest of the trail that afternoon, finishing off at the RSPB Ken-Dee marshes reserve watching Greenland White-fronted Geese.
 
Saturday we headed further west in search of Annie Hope (02) who has been wintering on the Rhins of Galloway with an untagged juvenile.  Annie Hope was named by the Bowsers who run the Argaty Feeding Station near Doune.  After a quick visit to the tearoom at the Mull of Galloway and a wander round the RSPB reserve, the weather had cleared up and we found both birds near Port Logan.  They were hunting into the wind, not far from the sea, where we saw porpoises as well. 
 
It was brilliant seeing our birds doing so well, even if they are a long way away.  Dumfries and Galloway has so many fantastic birds and when you've finished watching the kites, there are Slavonian grebes, scoters, scaups, Greenland white-fronted geese and brent geese to be seen near Stranraer.
 
Rua and Annie Hope may come back this spring or stay where they are - either way it's great they are doing so well!

As I’ve talked about in previous blogs, Phoenix the kite is quite the traveller.  She was one of the first birds collected for the project in the Chilterns in June of last year and brought to Aberdeen with 14 other kites.  She was named by one of the volunteers from Aberdeen Countryside Project that built the cages in spring.  Phoenix was wingtagged (07) and had a radio transmitter attached in early-July and was released on 17 July.  Since then she’s got even more air miles under her belt.  During fine weather in September several of the Aberdeen red kites dispersed from the area and during an aerial survey of the region we re-located a couple of the birds, including Phoenix.  She was near Nethy Bridge with another bird. 

Since October, Phoenix has made the journey to and from Nethy Bridge three times!  The 120 mile round trip goes across some of the highest ground in Grampian, and isn’t an easy jaunt for our young female.  At the moment she is with the main flock near Aberdeen, but when the weather clears on the higher ground I imagine she’ll be off again!  If you see Phoenix, or any other of the Aberdeen Red Kites, we would love to hear about it.  Please email us at aberdeenredkites@rspb.org.uk

After last month's winter movements blog, the kites have surprised us all again with another set of exciting movements across Scotland.  07 Phoenix returned from Nethy Bridge to Aberdeen for a couple of days, before heading off once again and at the moment we are not sure to where.  The Kingswells Bullet 27 has also been on the move again, and came back to Aberdeen in time for Christmas. 
 
So now in late-January, while the rest of us are fighting off the festive flab, the kites are continuing their winter routine of searching for worms and invertebrates combined with scavenging from the local pheasant shoot.  They seem to manage to scare off the local crows and buzzards to find enough to eat, and even fed well during the snow we had last week.
 
As the days begin to get longer myself and the other kite trackers continue to listen on the radio for our birds and the other Scottish missing kites.  Who knows who'll turn up in Aberdeen and which kites will head off from here.

The red kites are continuing to spread their wings and are travelling all over Scotland.  In addition to the two birds mentioned in my last blog, another five have been spotted outwith the Aberdeen area  in the last few weeks. 
 
Kite 02 has also headed down to Dumfries & Galloway where it has hooked up with an untagged kite on the Rhins of Galloway. Bird 02 was named Annie Hope by Argaty Red Kite Feeding Station and has found its way to a regular favourite place for wintering kites.  Kite 26 is still down there and is roosting and feeding with the main population. Meanwhile Kites 01 and 23 have headed south to join 27 in Central Scotland, and have both been to feed at the Argaty feeding station near Doune.

Another two birds have bucked the trend and headed northwest to Nethy Bridge, and appear to have settled there for the winter. 

Closer to home, the main roost of birds on the outskirts of Aberdeen is doing well.  The birds have settled in to their new surroundings and even started to moult through some adult feathers on their heads as they enter their 'teenage' months.  They seem to spend their days showing off their acrobatic flying whilst searching for food.  They're early to their beds and late up in the morning - I never got away with that as a teenager!  With the weather certainly getting colder it will be fascinating to see how the birds adapt and what they do next?

In my last blog I talked about the role of the missing kite database.  Well it has worked and two of our missing birds have been found!  Last Wednesday wing tag 26's radio signal was picked at the Dumfries and Galloway feeding station at Bellymack Hill Farm near Laurieston.  It was also seen on Friday morning. 
 
Then on Thursday last week another kite was found near Doune in Stirlingshire.  This one is wing tag 27 and is called the Kingswells Bullet after being named by local school Kingswells Primary.
 
Even though we expected this to happen its still really exciting and I'm relieved the birds are ok.  The question now is where will the other birds turn up and will they come back to Aberdeen?!

I’ve just got back from a weeks holiday and its all change – birds missing and the roost is shifting!  We are now entering the peak dispersal period for juvenile red kites, so keeping an eye on their movements is even more important. 

Radio tracking is a fantastic way of having contact with birds, even though you might not see them.  All of the radios on the kites have a posture sensor so you can tell from the frequency of the beeps if the bird is flying or perched.  If a bird is recorded in the same posture and location for some time then you know that something might be wrong.  If you want to actually see a particular kite, you can use the tracking gear to get several bearings and triangulate the position of the bird.  Reading wing-tags can be difficult so radio transmitters provide a useful additional tool.

We have four birds that are officially missing which means that other kite workers across Scotland are listening out for them as they survey their own birds.  I also check frequencies of other missing kites when tracking across Grampian.  So far the birds have moved up to about 10km from the release site, although we have had one bird which ventured further afield to near Alford (which is about 50km from Aberdeen) and has now come back into the main roost by Aberdeen.

Red kites roost communally and by following them in the evening we can tell that the kites are shifting their roost site every couple of nights as they are decide on the best spot.  As the days get shorter and colder, the decision will happen soon – it will be interesting to see where they end up calling home for the winter!

 

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!

We’ve had 30 young red kites in the pens on the outskirts of Aberdeen for the past 6 weeks and now we are starting to release them into the wild.  Caring for the birds in the pens has been pretty busy and time consuming.  We have been checking the health of the birds and feeding them twice a day throughout this period so there have been plenty of long days. 

Given the varied diet of kites in the wild we wanted them to be offered as many different foods as we could whilst we were holding them in the pens.  This has mainly included rabbits and venison offcuts from RSPB Scotland’s Abernethy reserve.  However, this has been supplemented by a variety of road kills including roe deer and rabbits as well as crows, gulls and small mammals.

The Aberdeen red kites have been kindly donated from all over the UK.  We have 15 birds from the Chilterns and 9 from the Black Isle and 6 from Central Scotland.  So as well as different ages of birds from different populations we have a real genetic mix. 

Having watched the kites grow from smallish balls of fluff to fully grown adult kites with a forked tail and 5ft wing span, it is rewarding, if a little emotional, to begin the releases.  We now have 15 birds on the wing, including six that were let out today.  We’ve staggered the releases partly because there is an age difference but also I can track each of the released birds down that evening to make sure they’re all ok on their first night out of the pens.

Now we’ve started releasing my main job will be tracking the kites using the individual wing tags and radio tags on the birds.  These kites are amazing flyers – true acrobats of the sky, so they could end up anywhere!  I feel very attached to these birds, and can’t wait to see where they all go and what they get up to.  Watch this space, as even though it feels like we’ve been working away for ages, this is just the beginning of the project!