£500 FOR THE KITE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1940, Page 4

£500 FOR THE KITE

The newly-issued private report of the Kite Preservation Fund, to which more than three hundred bird-lovers and ten Nature societies subscribe, says the "Manchester Guardian," not only gives some strange information about Britain's rarest hawks but shows that it costs nearly .£soo' a year to protect half a dozen nesting pairs in their lonely mid-Wales hill woods. Information has to be collected of their whereabouts in spring so that their nests can be located when they settle down, and day and night watcherseven camping on the hills in lonelier districts —are paid wages, with a bonus for every pair successfully hatching off without collector's climbing the trees. Half a dozen pairs were located last year—the names of their haunts are being kept secret for obvi-' ous reasons —one young pair was not found to have nested, one pair definitely reared a young kite, while young kites seen in another locality after a pair had moved from a tree by a public footpath, may have been their offspring reared elsewhere. Despite the careful watch maintained, with a motor-car patrol, tftsre were a number of raids by collectors, chiefly at dawn and dusk. There even seems to be a system of spying to discover the date when the; paid watchers are to take up residence by the nest and forestall them