THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2295, 24 February 1898, Page 46

THE NATURALIST.

The Disappearance of the Kite. Mr J. E. Hurting writes a 8 follows to the Field :— Strolling lately into the well-known auction rooms of Mr Stevens in King street, Oovent Garden, where all sorts of natural cariosities are from time to time dispersed, my atteafcion was attracted by a stuffed specimen of the kite (Milva3 regalie), which, accordiog to the saLa catalogue, was obtained many years ago in Monk's Wood, Huntingdonshire, and had belonged to the late Mr Douoleday, of Eppiag, a well-known collector ot birda. For the naturalist, a more interesting souvenir of the past could not well be found ; for Monk's Wood was one of the last-known breeding haunts of this bird in the Midland Counties, and the fcpacimen before me, which, from another source, I learnt had oean received by Mr Doubled ay "in the fle&b," had no doubt been treasured by its former owner as one of she rarest of ISiitish birds. Knowing something of the former history ot the kite as a resident in England, it was, perbap?, nos surprising that I should find myself bidding for bo interesting a reiic of the past, and in i less than half an hour I left the room the j happy possessor of the bird in question. Con tern plating its great forked tail and ample pinions, one'*s tnoughts naturally wandered oack to the days when the royal kite, or fork-tailed giead, as it was locally called, was one of the commonest birds in this country. Time was when it was stringently projected as a. uteful scavenger in great towns, and history tells us hoy? foreigners of note, sufficiently distinguished to have their travels written down, were struck on coming to England with xhe number and tamene&s of the kites which they saw here. Thus, so long ago as 1465, when Baron voet Rozmifcal, brother to the Queen of Bohemia, journeyed to England, and, travelling by wny oi' Sand- ! wich ana Oanteroury to London, stood upon old London Badge, which he flescriDed as having buildings upon it throughout its entire length, ha was struck with the number of kites which he saw, to injure which, he was told, was a seriouß off^ece. This remark was confirmed somewhat later by the French-naturalisr. Pi^r/e Beloc, 1555, and by Cln&iuß (Charles L'Ecluae), who visited .England in 1671, aad in v. note to his translation of Belon's work observed thai it was forbidden to kill these birds, since they collected and devoured the refuse of the streets, and even of the river itself. James I protected kites for another reason ; they furnished the best of flights to his trained jerfalcons, a sport; to which he was much addicted, and on. which he lavished large sums of money. Kite-kawking, indeed, though an expansive amusement by reason of the value ot tDe hawks employed, was loag practised by Baglish falconers, even co late as the first quarter ot the present century, when the Earl of Orford and Colonel ThorntOD, of Thornviile Jtioyal, with the members of the Falconers' Cmb, used to " range for kite near Eiden. Gap" and over Thetford Warren. Monk's Wood and Alconbury Hill werß then the favourite batmts of this bird, and some interesting testimony of its former abundance there is affurdad by Mr Birch Eeynardson in his " Reminiscences of a Gentleman Coachman '' (1875, p. 74). He j says: Within a few miles of Stilfeon, and between Stilton and Stamiord, is a hill called Alconbury Hill. In the days lam writing oS (about the year 1824-, and from before that time to 1828 or 1829) there used ro be in tb.HU part ci the country an incredible number ot kites — the i forked-tail kite, or what in Scotland were called gleudf, the red feathers of whose forked tail were famous tor wiugs ot salmon filer;. These J birds used to be soaring over the road, and over i a wood called Monk's Wood. In almost every I direction (when travelling by the Sfcomtord Eegent coach) one used actually to see them sitting in the middle of the road, and on one ' occaeiou I remember couuting as many as 27 in the air as the same time. The preservation of game, 1 suppose, has got rid ot them, for no such bird is to be seen now ; and it; is wonderful how in a few years these birda have becjine almost extinct throughout Englaud. I have nofc eeen one for at least 3S years (i.e., not Binee 1839). Ttis late Mr Stevenson, ia the first volume of his " Birds of Norfolk," published in iboG, could only write of the kite in the past tense. In former years, he says, this bird occasionally remained with us to breed, and half a century back used to be rather comi mon in Norfolk. The last of which he had any j knowledge was trapped close to its ancient I hauntatOroxton, Bear Thetford, in November, ! 1552. Dr Churchill Babington has mentioned ccrne more recent instances of the occurreace of kite in Norfolk and Suffolk inhia volume on the birds or tha latter couoty (18S6), out he is compelled to add : " Tbie bird has now become so rare as fco be hardly ever seen in the county. Scarcely any specimens have been obtained in the last 25 yeAVb." I«a Lincolnshire the kite, as a resident and breeding species*, lingered somewhat longer, a fact which is probably to be attributed to its beicg still able to find concealment during the nesting season in some of the great woods of toat county. Mr Adrian, of Lincoln, informed Professor Newton, in 18G4, that kites in Lincoinsbira Wtsre than becoming scarcer every year. This he attributad partly to the destruction of the birds and partly to that of their favourite haunts by the felling and stubbing of the woods, in two of wbioh 100 acres had bean cut down since the beginning o£ ihe year, and thi^ in the best lecaiHy. In his account of the k ; ie published in the fourth edition of Yarrell's " British Birds," Professor Newton remarks: "There ware nests in Lincolnshire until the year 1857, but, owing in a, great measure to the cuttiug down of the woods.it has probably been driven from that locality." Happily this has not proved to be the case. A nest of the kite was found in Ballington Wood, near Wragby, in that county, in 1870, and there is reason to believe that the speoies lingered there even a few years longer. According to Jabpz Allies, author of the "Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire," in his young days the kite wag well known at Alt'rick, about six miles N. of Great Malvern : There was a coppice there in which they might often be heard "mewing," as the

country people called their cry, but guns and persecution drove them away. In 1850 the kites returned fco their old haunts at Alfrick, for at that time the principal house and estate there, called The QrimseEd, had fallen into Ch&ncery, and was unoccupied and waste. — Lees's '* Pictures of Nature Around the Malvern Hills," 1858 (p. 17). In the West of England the kite must at one time have been common enough. We learn from a gGod observer in West Gloucestershire, J. L Knapp, of Thorn bury, that in his day (1529) these birds had a habit of roosting in company instead of in pairs, as la the case with most birds of prey. On this point he relates the following cuiious experience : I can confusedly remember a very extraordinary capture of these birds when I was a boy. Roosting one winter evening on some very lofty elms, a fog came on during the night, which froze early in tbe morning, and tautened the feet of the poor kites so firmly to the boughs that some s.dvfcaluroua youths brought down, I think, lb or them so aeenred ! In one point of detail it is probable that the writer was mistaken. It is more likely that the inability of these birds to move was occasioned by the congelation of the moisture upon the wing.s which prevented the .' expansion of the flight feathers, and that such en accident does sometimes occur is vouched for in the case of rooks )>y Gilbert White in his " Natural History of Solborne " and 'ny D*niel in the suppleiaant to his- " Rural Sports " (p. 63G). The kite is ssid to have been common in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor at the end of the last century (Bray's "Tatnar and Tavy," vol. i, p. 346), and the lats Mr Rodd, of P-snzance, thovgn that no hawk was oetter j kaown in the ldrgs woodland districts of the central part of Devon when he was a schoolboy at Buckfaatlaigh. He was born in 1810, und could deoose to its nesting in King's j Wood, near Holme Cnsse, on toe eastern borders of D irtmoor. Messrs DUrban and Matbews, however, in their " Birds of D^von" (p. 155), express the opinion that; the kite wns uever so common in Devonshire or any of tho south-westeru counties as it was formerly ir> tbe home counties and in other j parts of England. The Gloucestershire naturalist above referred to has hinted at the cause of this : Our copees present it with no enticini? harbourage, and our culture scarea it. Iv former years I -rbs iufciraatcly acquainted wifcn this bird ; but its numbers set,m greatly on the | decline, having been destroyed or driven away to lonely places or to the moat extensive woodlands. For " lonely places " we have to cross the Welsh border, and it is some sackfaction to know that, in the midst of the daily persecution which attends the larger birds of prey, | and some sven of the smaller kinds, the kite j still finds a home in at least three of the Welsh counties, where, so recently as 1892 i and 1893, I was made acquainted with their i nesting-places. I abstain, however, from , naming even the counties, last by so doing I should unwittingly hastan the disappearance of a species whose extirpation every true naturalist would deplore. i In Scotland, too, the kite still " struggles , for existence," and in three or four counties that might be named it still breeds annually | in wild place?, remote from the haunts of i man. In July 1876, being at Brighton, I \ called on Pratt, the birdstuffer, and there j scVfv two young kites which v7ere being pre- , served for the late Mr E T. Booth, wtio had I procured them, I thick, in Perthshire or j R->B6-shire. They wer* 1 " branchers," and had they been allowed to live would coon have j been able to fly well. They had nearly got j rid of their dowo, but the tail was not yet I forked. They may be seen in the collection j which was formed by Mr Booth in his beauti- j ful gallery of British birda, in the Drke road, | which, by his liberality, haa sicce his death ; become the property of the corporation of B'ighton. From what I have seen of the kite in parts of France, Holland, Greece, and Thessaly, where at close quarters I have Bometimes watched three or four on the wing at once, I am disposed to echo ths opinion of the Gloucescershira naturalist in regard to it. Struck with its grand appearance on the wing, he described it as " tbe ficest native bird that we possess, and all its deportment partakes of a dignity peculiar to itself, well becoming a denizen of the forest or the park." More's tha pity that it should be now so scarce. A correspondent at Incn Olutha writes as follows :—": — " A cat belonging to Mr R. Ford, I of Inch Olutha, killed and leEt on his doorstep one day lapfc week a most unusually- | marked thrush. The body of the bird was of ! the usual colour; the large feathers oi the wings were all white with the exception of j tbeir tips, which were brown ; a brown bar | ran across the upper part of each wing near | the bottom of the large wicg feathers, above i that another bar o£ white, and the rest j bjfowa. A short distance from the tips of the tail feathers a clearly defioed white bar ran across the bird's tail. With this exesp- ! tion the tail feathers were of the usual ! colour. The bird has boen frequenting Mr Ford's garden for some tim», and, unfortunately fell a victim to the cab."