The last of the gleds (Scottish for the red kites; gled from the way they 'glide' through the sky) were killed in Stirling. A busy town, they roosted on the rock beside the castle. The story goes that they attacked a sleeping baby, so the Provost said there were too many of them and ordered that they were thinned out. Instead they men killed them all. They were already gone from most of the sporting estates thanks to the efforts of the gamekeepers.
In the towns they were useful scavengers, tidiers up of anything dead that might cause disease, etc.. Their absence allowed rats to proliferate, and corbies (black birds of the crow family, the word is used interchangeably around here) and now seagulls fill the niche.
Not surprised the crows and the gleds come to fight it out, I reckon they'll be in trouble with the seagulls though. They mob everything. The buzzards and the herons that fly overhead here have problems with them.
