Last year 115 young Red Kites were tagged in the nest as part of a new project to jointly monitor their dispersal, any intermixing of the native Welsh birds with continental origin kites and also the importance of kite feeding stations in the survival and dispersal of young kites.
To-date seventy three of the young birds have been seen alive at one or other of the feeding stations and first indications are that there has been a very high first year survival rate. Only two tagged birds are known to have died, one of these being the wind-farm casualty reported earlier.
No Welsh birds have yet been sighted outside Wales although we have reported at least three different English kites and one Scottish kite in Wales during the winter.
The furthest movement yet recorded for a 2002 Welsh chick is from a nest near Hay-on-Wye to a feeding station just outside Aberystwyth.Another individual, named Lucy by her Adopter because of her diamond tags (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!) has already been recorded commuting between two different feeding stations at Rhayader and Talsarn,on opposite sides of the Cambrian Mountains.
