The joy of seeing red

It’s over 30 years now since I heard on the news that the first chicks of reintroduced red kites had hatched in Britain. I lived then, as now, in the West Country, and was used to seeing buzzards regularly whenever I ventured up onto the moors. But while raptors themselves were never too scarce, a red kite sounded far more exotic – not so much a creature from a distant land, but an animal that had flown in from our medieval past.

It would be many years before I’d actually see one in the wild. But there then followed a period when certain journeys or visits to particular parts of the country would offer a tantalising chance of seeing one.

Against all the odds, their range was expanding. Eventually, any trip along the usually dull M4 would bring welcome distraction, with regular kite-spotting opportunities. Sitting in a country beer garden after the Rutland Birdfair a couple of years ago, I was dazzled by the numbers of kites overhead.

And then last year it happened. Standing outside the school gates at pick-up time, I saw a red kite overhead, right on my own doorstep. I felt like punching the air in triumph. “Look what we did!” Just think what else we could do.

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THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

Nicola Chester, ‘Building more rural homes is vital’, page 28 “The situation has deepened into a crisis, fed by record house prices and stagnating wages.”

Dixe Wills, ‘100 miles of Heaven’, page 32 “Virginia Woolf was a prolific walker in the Ouse Valley, declaring t