Wiltshire Police are appealing for information after the discovery of a shot red kite near Swindon.
A member of the public found the dead kite near Green Hill, south of Purton, at around 5pm on 4th February 2024.
A spokesperson for Wiltshire Police said:
“We are appealing for information after a protected bird of prey was found dead in a rural location, Greenhills to the south of Purton.
“We would like to hear from anyone who was in the area at the time or who may have dash cam footage taken from the area.
If you can help, please contact us on 101 quoting the log number 54240019567“.
It’s not clear why Wiltshire Police decided to wait for three months before issuing this appeal for information. How hard can it be?
Raptor Persecution UK 
I ccouldn’t agree more, what chance of gleaning scant evidence after such a long time. Next day is probably too late…
Shows how serious they are. Like with any shooting or indeed offense except the ones never mentioned desecrating masterpieces and war memorials.
What is the point of waiting all this time before making an appeal? Seems to me at least that this is just going through the motions.
You might think that they would be slightly embarrassed by their snail paced response but I guess you’d need to be conscientious for that.
Three months?
What took them so long? What evidence do Wiltshire Police hope to find now?
Almost seems like lip service to this deplorable murder. Still, hopefully, better late than never.
It is way beyond a joke when our raptors are being shot dead almost, it seems, daily.
They aked for dashcam video? Mine over-writes the oldest on a constant cycle. I don’t know about others’ dashcams, but mine would have lost that video long before.
im frightened stiff we have another over Westerdale moor where 2 were killed last June we were watching it last night but I feel so upset because I fear the worst .
I live in the village of Purton and know the area very well, as the Braydon Forest, of which Green Hill is a part, has been my birding area since the late 1990’s and I have been ringing in five of the woodlands in the Forest since 2012. We have had a couple of Buzzard deaths: I found one that was just skeletal when found, so cause of death was not ascertainable. A second proved not to have been shot, and there were no broken bones, but it was found by an ex-gamekeeper who was convinced it wasn’t a natural death: sitting, wings outstretched, in the middle of a path in one of my ringing sites. The local vets x-rayed it and it was then sent off for examination, but I never heard anything back, so must assume nothing was found.
Foxes are regularly shot and dumped in the area. Unfortunately, Wiltshire Police are in special measures for good reasons, xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx That they have had two female hunt members as part of their rural crime team says all you need to know about how seriously they take wildlife crime.
They take their lead from the PCC, Philip Wilkinson, who is overtly pro-hunt and pro-shooting. I am not maligning the man: he has made enough public pronouncements that exemplify his attitude. One hopes he will be gone after Thursday and we might get a PCC who xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx. Unfortunately, Wiltshire is serf-central so we are likely to be stuck with him and incompetent policing for years to come.