Job is strictly for the birds

Jun 19 2005 By Pauline Holt, The Sunday Sun

Tell Keith Bowey to go fly his kite and he'll take it as a compliment. As Keith prepares to release a second batch of these spectacular birds of prey into the skies above Gateshead he tells Pauline Holt about his passion for the Northern Kites Project.

In medieval times, the sight of red kites soaring over our towns and countryside would have been a familiar one.

"They were once a very widespread and common bird," says Keith Bowey, project manager for Northern Kites, a reintroduction programme that will see up to 80 of the birds released in our region by 2008.

These attractive birds boast a majestic 1.5m (5ft) wing span and beautiful russet colouring with grey heads. Keith says: "They were one of the first birds to be protected by Royal decree.

"They are foragers and had a very useful function in cleaning up the streets of the towns . . . they were effectively the recyclers of the day."

Sadly, the kites' story mirrors so many others in natural history. They were virtually wiped out by man. Keith says: "They were persecuted once people started rearing game. They will eat game, such as rabbits, but only once those things have died.

"I suppose the gamekeepers would see the kite sitting on a corpse and jump to the conclusion that it was the kite that killed it."

The birds began disappearing during the latter part of the 18th century and by the end of the 19th had been completely eradicated from England and Scotland.

Only a very small Welsh contingent hung on, a handful of pairs, that somehow managed to survive in a remote part of central Wales.

Up until last year red kites had been missing from the North East landscape for 150 years. But Keith and his team are bringing them back.

Our region is important in that we are the final piece in the national jigsaw after the drive to restore the red kite to England and Scotland was begun by English Nature and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds back in 1989.

Over five years 93 young birds, mainly recruited from north east Spain where the kite is still common, were released in the Chilterns of southern England and in northern Scotland.

Since then much of the country has been joined up with further releases in central and south west Scotland, the Midlands and Yorkshire. A year ago the North East welcomed its first kites.

Last July Keith brought 20 birds from the Chilterns up to the Derwent Valley and next month a second group of 30 will join them as the next stage of the reintroduction programme takes off.

It's hoped that, once our birds become established, they'll make friends with kites from other parts of the country and we'll end up with an interlinked population, all interchanging their genes.

Keith says; "If you look at archaeological excavations of medieval Newcastle, red kites were there. All we are doing is bringing them back to where they should be. We"re restoring a piece of our natural heritage."

"From a personal point of view it's tremendously satisfying. What I have here is the best chance in a generation to get people to be as enthusiastic as I am about the kites.

"I hasten to say the reason this project is already so successful is because of the people of the North East."

People certainly seem to be taking the birds to their hearts.

For example, every one of the kites released so far has been adopted by different schools in Gateshead and the birds are proving to be a great way of teaching youngsters about the importance of conservation.

Pupils at one school, Winlaton's West Lane Primary, were in the news earlier this week when they got one of the new intake of kites to replace another that was illegally poisoned last year.

Phoenix, one of the chicks to be released next month, replaces Flash whose corpse was found in Tynedale last October. Kites feed on carrion and Flash was found close to the poisoned bait of a rabbit and pheasant. The perpetrator has yet to be found.

Thankfully, though, most people have welcomed the return of the kite to our region.

Indeed, the birds are already becoming something of a tourist attraction, an emblem of the North East's natural regeneration in the same way that the Angel of the North, the Sage Gateshead and the Baltic symbolise the region's cultural renaissance.

Keith says: "What we want to achieve is for the kites to become emblematic of the fantastic green environment we have in this region.

"I think this is something we haven't been particularly wonderful at doing in the past. But the kites are great ambassadors.

"They are iconic birds. And what's really special is that they are curious and interested in folk. That allows us to connect people to the kites. You can't always do that with other birds."

Bringing kites back to the North is a big-spend project that will come in at just under #1m over the five years.

Around one third of the total cost is being covered by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the rest is coming from English Nature, the RSPB, Gateshead Council, the National Trust, Northumbrian Water and the Forestry Commision, with additional cash from the SITA Environmental Trust.

Keith's enthusiasm for the birds is certainly contagious and it's born from a lifelong love of nature.

Keith, the son of a shipyard worker, was raised in South Shields, South Tyneside. His interest in ornithology was ignited by a school prize he won, at seven, of the Observer Book of Birds.

He says: "When I wasn't playing football in the street I was scratting round in ponds."

He loved science, particularly biology, and did his first degree in zoology at Newcastle. In the early 1980s he went into nature conservation, managing reserves for local authorities.

He also worked for Durham Wildlife Trust, managed the city's biodiversity action plan and did a postgraduate degree at Durham University before getting the kites gig.

He likes to joke that he only got the job because he lives on Northern Kites' doorstep in Rowlands Gill, gateshead, with his wife Julie and their five-year-old son Robert.

Keith laughs: "Ecology also got me my wife. She was a conservation volunteer."

In one of life's quirky coincidences, their first date was spent at the Black Horse pub in Barlow, Gateshead, now the recommended spot for the best views of red kites.

Robert already has his own pair of binoculars and, call it nepotism, his school was the first to adopt a kite, called Speedy.

If the enthusiasm of their guardian angel was all that was required to make Northern Kites a soaraway success, Phoenix, Speedy and their feathered friends would be guaranteed to become a permanent fixture in the skies above the Angel of the North.

Fact  File

Born: South Shields, South Tyneside.

Educated: Harton Comprehensive, South Shields, Newcastle University and Durham University.

Favourite book: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Favourite film: It's a Wonderful Life. "I'm a huge fan of Frank Capra."

Favourite music: White Man in Hammersmith Palais by the Clash.

Most inspirational person: My grandmother Janet Cramman. She was one of those incredibly strong Northern women who brought up five children during the Depression. She lived to 94 and probably would have gone on a lot longer if she'd not had such a hard life.

Dearest wish: To get some sleep. I slept like a baby . . . until my own baby was born.

Kite bites

*Latin name: Milvus milvus

*Lifespan: Around 22 years

*Old fashioned names for it include swallow-tailed falcon and glead

*There are now 500 breeding pairs of red kites in Britain

*They eat carrion (dead animals) but will also take live prey like small mammals and birds, beetles and earthworms

*To monitor the birds each are given a plastic wing tag colour-coded for their home area. The Derwent Valley birds' tags are pink