Gigrin Farm Red Kite Feeding Station
Red Kites are fed at Gigrin Farm every day of the year and well worth a visit. One of Powys Tourist Attractions where you can learn about these wild and beautiful birds of prey at the Welsh Kite Trust
Mid Wales has the greatest density and diversity of birds of prey in southern Britain...Mid Wales was home to the last remaining Native Red Kites. Now, due to the hard work of the Conservation bodies here in Wales, Red Kites are once again in the ascendance.
The Red Kite was named the 'Bird of the Century' by the British Trust for Ornithology at the end of 1999, because of its determined fight back from the brink of extinction.
Once a common sight in towns and cities all over the UK, in the 16th Century a series of Government Acts declared that the kite was vermin, and it was decided that the Red Kite should be killed throughout Wales and England.
Such persecution continued and, by the end of the 18th Century, increasing numbers of gamekeepers were employed on country estates. They killed many more birds, and in the late 18th Century Red Kites had bred for the last time in England. In Scotland they suffered a similar fate.
Only in rural Mid Wales, specifically the Tywi and Cothi valleys, did the Red Kite hang on, its numbers down to just a few pairs.
Luckily at that point, some local landowners had the foresight to set up an unofficial protection programme to try to safeguard this beautiful bird.