Country diary: There's peace to be found in flying kites
At first glance, while getting my binoculars to focus, it could have been a Liverpool v Newcastle football match. The black-and-white wing discs of the two lapwings twisted and fanned round the pivoting tale of the red kite. Corvids are often seen mobbing a kite, but lapwings?
Recently, when I have begun to worry about the cares of others and grown weary of my own voice, I have sought out a pair of red kites nearby. My intention is to follow the example of Wendell Berry, the poet and farmer, in his poem The Peace of Wild Things. In it he speaks of waking at night fearful, and seeking solace by lying down 'where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds'. 'For a time,' he continues, 'I rest in the grace of the world and am free.' Even when mobbed, the graceful flight of a red kite brings me a sense of peace.
This pair started to nest in March, though I wasn't sure where. In April only the male was showing; I could see where he disappeared into the edge of the wood through leafless trees, but still I could not locate the nest. So I went to see Roy the woodsman. I knew Roy would know, and sure enough he took me up a track – and there she was, sitting on a nest made in a fork of an ash tree. Now, in May, with the leaves fully unfurled, she and her eggs are protected from the intrusion of people with binoculars.
Watching these birds is full of nostalgia for me. In the late 80s, as a countryside ranger in the Cambrian mountains, I helped to look after the last remaining indigenous kite nests. It was a serious operation – the previous year, to deter egg thieves, Gurkhas had sat camouflaged under the nest for the 31 days of incubation.
Though many of our kites today were part of the reintroduction programme from Scandinavia, I like to think the pair I have been watching are distantly related to those last few that survived in the Cambrians.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
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