The diet of British birds of prey in the distant past was very different from that of their descendants. A team led by archaeologist Juliette Waterman of the University of Reading discovered surprising disparities between bones of raptors such as red kites found at Roman and medieval archaeological sites and those of the same birds that lived during what scholars call the modern period, which began in the seventeenth century. Chemical analysis of the bones showed that in the Roman period, the birds’ diet included meat from domesticated mammals such as sheep, cows, and pigs, which they took from scraps of human food waste. The team found that by the medieval period, raptors were dining out almost exclusively on livestock scavenged from human settlements. That changed dramatically in the early modern period, once people began making a concerted effort to maintain sanitary living conditions. “By the modern era, you no longer have pig carcasses rotting in the streets,” says Waterman, who notes that raptors in this period seem to have subsisted on a diverse diet of wild mammals, small birds, and earthworms. Rabbits also provided an abundant food resource for modern birds of prey. The animals were introduced to Britain during the Roman period and were kept by farmers in warrens. In the late medieval period, escaped rabbits proliferated in the wild—as rabbits do—giving raptors a new menu option.
After nearly going extinct in England in the twentieth century, red kites were reintroduced beginning in 1989, and there are now some 6,000 breeding pairs in southern England. But with wild prey growing scarcer, these resourceful birds are increasingly venturing into urban areas in search of food. “We have news stories about red kites snatching sandwiches from children and plates of meat from barbeques,” says Waterman. “We need to remember that we have a long history with these birds, and they don’t always behave in ways you expect.”
