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The UK Bird Atlas

Black Kite (Milvus migrans)Where and when to see it in the UK

Passage migrant · reporting peaks April to May · Kites, Old World Vultures, Eagles, and Hawks · BOU category AE

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

Black Kite (Milvus migrans)
Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Peak months
Black Kite: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

Black Kite has been recorded in 105 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (4%) in records to 2026. Passage migrant in the UK. Its strongest squares are in England, Wales and Scotland. Reporting peaks in April to May.

Conservation status: Not Evaluated (IUCN Red List, NE)
View on the IUCN Red List
Relative to this species' best squares (how classes are calculated)
Very high
100% or more of visits
High
100% to 100%
Moderate
<1% to 100%
Low
under <1%
Surveyed, not recorded
at least 20 qualifying visits, no record
Insufficient records
too few visits to say
Lighter fill
Few visits, lower confidence
Small dot
Occasional: a single record, or out of season

Seasonality

Reporting rate by month, relative to the peak month
MonthRelative to peakShare of visitsTypical class
January 1%<1%Moderate
February 3%<1%Moderate
March 3%<1%Very high
April 100%<1%Very high
May 90%<1%Very high
June 48%<1%Very high
July 4%<1%Very high
August 7%<1%Very high
September 23%<1%Very high
October 59%<1%Low
November 4%<1%Low
December 0%<1%Very high

Squares with the highest reporting rate in April

SquareWhereShare of visitsClass
HU31Shetland Islands, Scotland100%Very high
HZ27Shetland Islands, Scotland100%Very high
NT27City of Edinburgh, Scotland100%Very high
NT56East Lothian, Scotland100%Very high
SH54Gwynedd, Wales100%Very high
SJ28Wirral, England100%Very high
ST21Somerset, England100%Very high
ST55Somerset, England100%Very high
SY58Dorset, England100%Very high
SY67Dorset, England100%Very high

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.