Monday 21 February 2011

With Many Councils In The UK Collecting Rubbish Only Once Every Two Weeks,

some every three or even four weeks, there has been a good side to this, the once near extinct red kite has made a comeback to many places in the UK, the numbers of red kites plunged to just a handful of breeding pairs in the 1960s, confined to rural mid-Wales, their numbers took a sharp decline in Victorian times when they were treated like vermin and hunted to the brink of extinction,

but red kites are once again flourishing across Britain, thanks to the efforts of conservationists...and local councils who leave household rubbish to pile up, in Reading up to 60 red kites have been spotted from the roof of a multi-storey car park, apparently watching for the roadkill on which they like to feed, in medieval times, red kites proliferated in Britain, they were even at one stage protected by a Royal Decree as they helped keep towns clean, but by the 16th Century kites were considered vermin, with a bounty placed on their heads, farmers wrongly believed they killed their lambs, in fact the Red Kite is not a hunter but a scavenger, wildlife experts said red kites are drawn to cities because they do not like live prey, Grahame Madge from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: ‘the red kite is a scavenger, not a hunter, and the birds will gather to feed on carrion, mainly dead rabbits, mice and pheasant, and animals killed on the road, so at least some good has come from less frequent rubbish collections.

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