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Just following this up again, I've realised we no longer have a meaningful dawn chorus. When we first moved here it was so loud that even if the weather was stifling we had to keep the bedroom windows shut or be woken from 4am in summer. A couple of years back I had a feeling it wasn't so noisy, but not until this week after I left the windows open by mistake did I realise it doesn't happen at all now.
Although the tits, a couple of doves and a robin have returned, there's no sparrows & dunnocks, finches, few woodpeckers and corvids. I also don't really see kestrels & small hawks by the roads any more, although there are still pheasants and partridges. Local small bird population has really plummeted, and it's not lack of food. Avian flu? Perhaps it doesn't affect the kites and large birds, of which there is relatively lots.
I’m a bit surprised it should have that much of an effect but I think its obvious that red kites would make other birds and mammals “uneasy” and maybe act in the same way as a scarecrow etc. In my local area (within sight of a kite release site) I can say from personal observation that hares have moved from.open fields to nearby willow coppice woodlands which would probably put them more at risk from mammalian predators. The farmer for that area tells me there has been a noticeable drop in ground nesting birds. Even if kites are only scavengers, which I doubt, other birds an mammals don’t know that. No doubt given time and habitat improvement thing would eventually settle down.
I‘m in favour of these introductions generally and I’d like to see wolves reintroduced (but only in Scotland naturally ) but RSPB and others have a blinkered view of raptors and bang on about largely unproven “persecution” while being OK with controlling mammalian predators in areas they control .