Once so common that Shakespeare described London as "a city of Red Kites and Crows", the Red Kite (Milvus milvus) was persecuted and hunted to extinction throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Its reintroduction, initiated in 1989 by the RSPB and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, is now the most successful reintroduction of any bird species in Europe. In 2006 The Independent newspaper reported the first sighting of a Red Kite over London for 150 years.