This is almost certainly because there is a rich vein of folklore running through our relationships with many birds which reaches back to a time when people read the world around them differently Where people are necessarily hitched more directly to natural processes for their very survival they develop an ecological and cultural language through which the significance of other creatures is communicated This significance is of course prone to cultural shifts that cause major image changes for the creatures involved A good example of this is the red kite During the early sixteenth century foreign visitors to London were amazed to see red kites swooping down to take bread from the hands of children These birds were protected and valued urban scavengers But it was not long before they began to be seen as vermin and as a result were soon wiped out in most areas apart from Wales Gradually red kites began to assume a romantic personality linked to this Celtic stronghold and they have now become totemic birds of British conservation protected again and reintroduced with a view to helping them regain their original distribution