A red kite bird is coloured orange. The bird was named before the English language has a word for the colour "orange", so many things that were really orange were called red instead, although we did have the word for "orange" as in the fruit (the name for the colour comes from the fruit). The colour orange was not named in English until the 16th century. Other examples of orange things called red are a robin red-breast, a red squirrel, red-headed people and red deer.