THE TRUE KITES. 1 69 



surface of the body, and the much narrower black stripes on 

 the under-parts. 



Range in Great Britain. — Formerly a common species in many 

 parts of England and Wales, but now extinct in most of its 

 former haunts, though it is said still to nest in certain places 

 in the last-named priiicipality, where it is protected. In 

 Scotland, also, it occasionally breeds, but in England the last 

 nest recorded was in 1870 in Lincolnshire. There are still 

 living people who can remember the Kite as anything but a 

 rare bird, and the Marquis of Huntly's head keeper at Aboyne 

 could recall the time when it bred regularly at Glentanar, and 

 was always known as the " Glentanar Glead." In Ireland it 

 appears never to have been plentiful, and only some half-a- 

 dozen instances of its capture have been recorded. In the 

 Middle Ages it was a common species in England, and excited 

 the curiosity of foreign visitors by its abundance in the streets 

 of London, where it fed upon the offal and garbage. 



Range outside the British Islands. — Throughout the greater part 

 of Europe the Kite is met with, and breeds in Central Europe 

 and the Mediterranean countries, remaining in Southern Spain 

 at all seasons, though the number is slightly increased by 

 arrivals from the north in winter, when they pass over to North 

 Africa during the autumn migration. Its northern range in 

 Scandinavia is about 61° N. lat., and its eastern range in Russia 

 is bounded by the Dnieper and the Governments of Tula and 

 Orel. It breeds in Palestine, in North Africa, and is also 

 found in Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verd Islands. 



Hahits — However much the Red Kite may have frequented 

 the cities of England in former times, as its relations do many 

 of the eastern cities at the present day, the species is now 

 banished from the woods which it still frequented early in the 

 century, and is now only to be found in the wilder parts of 

 Great Britain. In many of the woodland districts of Northern 

 Germany, however, it is still a common bird, and Mr. See- 

 bohm gives an account of a bird-nesting excursion in Pome- 

 rania, when he took several nests. 



The flight of the Red Kite is easy and graceful, and the 

 forked tail of the bird renders it readily recognisable on the 



