Though starlings are our reliable neighbourhood watch, they sound no alarms and make no fuss when the kites come. Those birds of prey are clearly guilty of hanging around, yet the sky police fail to send out distress flares of shrieking individuals to send the intruders flapping, as they would for a sparrowhawk. The starling flock keeps to its beat from A to B, no distractions, no deflections, and passes through.
On a windy day, the red kites play. One of our resident pair begins its laborious ascent in front of my study window, each hard-fought wingbeat a steep, deep, slow row; the effort before ecstasy. At what appears to be a random height, it chooses to shoot the breeze, spreading wide its wings and tail, the freefalling parachutist that never drops.
In these conditions, the bird performs as an aerial boat, one that exerts maximum control with minimal effort. Its wings are both oars and sails, each draw on the paddles for momentum interspersed with longer spells in which the taut sheets feel for eddies in the air, tilting and straightening. From the side-on vantage point of a first-floor window I see it micro-steering with its fingertips, the outermost primary feathers making constant tiny adjustments, lifting and lowering.
All this flexibility is nothing compared with the workings of the kite’s expressive tail, a twin-forked rudder. There are times when the tail seems to have two personalities operating independently. One half goes off on a slant while the other holds still, the roles reversed in a mini-second. And there are moments of harmonic symmetry when the two parts are spread flat or are fixed like the two halves of an open book.
I know of no bird that speaks as eloquently to the wind and the world as the red kite. A generation ago, watching such a miracle of nature was reserved for those who lived in or journeyed to the comparatively remote valleys of west Wales. But it may be the most successful, most exhilarating reintroduction of our lifetimes; as kites refill the gaps left more than a century ago north, south and east, it seems we can all catch kite fever.
• This article was amended on 23 November 2018, to add the author’s name
