DURING the past 34 years, a distinctive silhouette has increasingly begun to appear in the skies above the UK, hovering high above the ground, its forked tail glinting in the sun. The red kite. Once extinct in England, this large bird of prey is now in the ascendant. As one Welsh landowner says: ‘Welcome to red-kite country. They are everywhere!’
Theirs is a genuine modern conservation success story. During the Middle Ages, kites were often seen—they were mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in and later by William Shakespeare, who, in, advises: ‘When the kite builds, look to your lesser linen,’ as it has a habit of stealing from washing lines. But, as the 20th century dawned,
