A century of Red Kites

I've been building up to this for a while. 16 years to be precise but I only really realised this quite recently. 100 Red Kites for the patch, one of those pointless milestones that eBird flags for you without any kind of effort. I had noted at the beginning of this year that since March 2010 I had seen nearly 90 on the patch and that I might get to 100 this year. My first in Wanstead was courtesy of a call from Prof W, and as recounted here. That seems a very long time ago but of course they are massively on the increase and I have raced to the mark.

On Bank Holiday Monday I had popped out to the patch for a brief respite from blogging, and a message from Andy, one of the newer local birders, had alerted me to a Red Kite circling Esso. Sure enough, there it was, the 97th. Very shortly afterwards another message of another, further west. Spinning 180 degrees and there was the 98th. #97 then joined #98 and drifted off west, but when I looked east again I could see two more. A quick check west to make sure I wasn't hallucinating and I put the message out, beating Andy by about three seconds. I type quickly.

These too drifted west, and when Bob strolled up to where I was in Brick Pits I put him onto what were now four Red Kites circling above the SSSI. Except there were now five. Whilst counting again to make sure I wasn't including a Crow or something I got to six. What?! But it was true, there were six Red Kite and two Crows thermalling in one binocular view. And so having left the house on 96 Kites I returned on 102. 

Of course I've probably seen more than this, but pre 2020 and thus pre eBird my record keeping was on a series of spreadsheets and it's possible that not everything got transferred. And back in the old days I definitely had a tendency to only record the first one of whatever it was for the year, and then be a bit more casual about subsequent sightings. This would explain single annual records between 2010 and 2014. Then again perhaps they were simply far less frequent back then?

2010-2026 year by year

I suspect two things are now true, better record keeping and more Red Kites. Fourteen this year and it is only the start of May. At this rate I'll get to 200 sometime in late 2028.