t has been generally accepted for the past 80 years that the British population of Red Kites Milvus milvus reached its lowest ebb about 1905, and then recovered, slowly and hesitantly, under protection. There is now good reason to suppose that in fact the population was at its lowest about 30 years later. The Handbook of British Birds (vol. 3, 1940) reported that only five individuals were known in Wales in 1905. This was based on a statement by E. G. B. Meade-Waldo (1910) that there were only two pairs and an odd bird in 1905. Our pre-eminent Welsh kite historian, the late Col. H. Morrcy Salmon, refuted Meade-Waldo's statement in this journal in 1957, pointing out that Meade-Waldo himself (quoting J. H. Salter) had already published a higher figure of three breeding pairs and one or two odd birds in 1905, and that this referred only to the protected area in die upper Tywi valley. Morrey Salmon concluded, from the evidence available to him, that there were at least nine and probably 12 or more individuals surviving in 1905. He did not, however, question the basic assumption that kites were rarer in the first decade of this century than at any subsequent time. More than a decade ago, the entomologist Adrian Fowles drew my attention to the wealth of records of Red Kites in the diaries of that remarkable naturalist Prof. J. H. Salter, chief protagonist of kite protection in Wales at the beginning of the present century. Assuming