Red Kite spotted over the village

While Audlem has a large extended family of buzzards living in the vicinity, today a red kite was spotted flying over a garden in Salford, less than a quarter mile from Audlem village centre. While there have been rumours of red kites being seen locally, this seems to be the first confirmed siting.

Red kites were, for many years, confined to a small area of Central Wales. A number of planned releases at Rutland Water and, with huge success, on the Chilterns about thirty miles west of London, has expanded their range dramatically in the past decade. Anyone driving along the M40 as it rises from the Oxfordshire plain up through the cutting on to the Chiltern hills is now likely to see many of these spectacular birds. And now they seem to have discovered Audlem! Still no reports, however, of a cuckoo.

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