( 84 ) 



ON THE FORMER ABUNDANCE OF THE KITE, 

 BUZZARD, AND RAVEN IN KENT 



BY 



N. F. TICEHURST, m.a.. f.r.c.s. 



In my History of the Birds of Kent (pp. 280 and 281) I sug- 

 gested that it was not unreasonable to suppose that, at any 

 rate a proportion of the Kites [M. milvns) that were so 

 common about London and its outskirts in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, had their homes in the adjoining woodland 

 districts of Kent. At the same time we had no direct evidence 

 of the bird as a Kentish breeding species until it was on the 

 verge of extinction in the early years of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. It has recently been my good fortune to obtain much 

 important direct evidence relating to a period between the 

 two above mentioned of the former status and actual great 

 abundance of the Kite in Kent, as well as of the Buzzard 

 {Buteo b. hiiteo) and Raven [Corvus ccorax). 



Some three or four years ago Mr. A. H. Taylor published, 

 in a local Almanac and Directory, a few extracts, from the 

 Churchwarden's Accounts of Tenterden of the seventeenth 

 century, relating to rewards paid for the killing of vermin. 

 These at once suggested to me the desirability of going into 

 these records at greater length. I have at last been able to do 

 this, and have been surprised at the wealth of information 

 contained in them with regard to the former status of certain 

 mammals and birds in the Weald of Kent. It is not possible 

 here to do more than summarize a part of the evidence 

 relating to the above three species, but I hope to be able to 

 publish a more extensive analysis of the whole elsewhere. 



The volume of accounts in question is the earliest now 

 remaining, and dates from a.d. 1626-7 ^^ 1711-12 ; entries 

 of rewards for vermin run through the entire volume, varying 

 in number from one or two per annum to as many as two and 

 even six and seven pages. With the exception of a few years 

 between 1644 and 1654 and after 1695, when the items are 

 lumped into a single total payment, they are set out in detail, 

 for the most part under the heads of separate species, though 

 a good many mixed lots occur. 



The Kite is first mentioned in the year 1654-5, and between 

 that year and 1675-6 an average of something between two 

 and three per annum were paid for. In the following year 

 there began, as is evident from the sudden rise in the number 

 of entries of all kinds, what may be termed an intensive 

 campaign for the thinning out of vermin, and it becomes at 



