Young birdwatchers may struggle to grasp that raptors, throughout the seventies and eighties, were far from common; except, that is, for kestrels; which hovered beside England’s busiest motorways, not as an occasional treat, but at regular intervals of perhaps three, or four, miles. Buzzards, too, were common, but in the north, the west and the New Forest. Anywhere else there was little chance of encountering them. There was, though, an up-side, to that, because those seen, elsewhere, were likely to be honey buzzards, or, in winter, rough-legged ones. Hence alarm-bells tended to ring and there was less of a needle in a haystack aspect. It’s also true that a kite encountered, during the summer months and away from central Wales, would, in almost all cases, be a vagrant ‘black’ one. These days observers may, quite easily, overlook them, amid the large flocks that stem from a hugely successful reintroduction program; but red kites are glorious. They were in their scarcity and are, every i
At the age of perhaps eight, or nine, my interest in ornithology was embryonic, but thumbing my father’s Collins field guide helped it to thrive. The more unusual species held, for me, an almost mystical quality. Photographic guides were fewer than today and so I knew them from representations, by fine-artists, including Basil Ede and Charles Tunnicliffe. They were celebratory works; intended, surely, to emphasise colour and add an extra layer of drama; and the buzz, for me, was to imagine how they would appear, in the flesh, or more accurately, of course, in the plumage. The thrill, then, of seeing paintings brought to life would become an elusive and longed for prize. Of course, birds don’t look as they do in such paintings. Sometimes they seem better, sometimes worse, but never the same. I recall standing in the grounds of Norfolk’s Castle Acre priory; having been dropped there in order that my father could visit someone in a nearby village. Goldfinches were present; excitingly so,