200 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
As to size, they are about equal to a Wood 
Pigeon's in length, but a good deal thicker and 
rounder. 
KITE. 
(^Milvus ictinus.') 
Fork-tailed Kite, Glede, Puttock. — This fine 
bird is now very nearly extinct as a breeding species 
in this country, and it is a question whether the 
efforts which have lately been made to protect it 
in some of its last haunts, by posting guards over 
the nest during the breeding season, will succeed in 
saving it or no. The best known locality where 
the Kite still nests is among the high hills of 
central Wales ; but there are one or two other 
places in England and Scotland v/here it still 
fortunately survives. Formerly the bird was very 
abundant in this country ; an envoy from southern 
Europe in the sixteenth century made special note, 
as one of the remarkable things he saw on his 
travels, of the number of Kites in the streets of 
London, where they doubtless played the same 
useful part as scavengers that Vultures do in the 
cities of the East to-day. In Shakespeare, too, we 
find references to the Kite, which shows that it was 
quite one of the " common objects of the country- 
