Which bird of prey?

KESTREL: About the same length as a sparrowhawk but slimmer and with more pointed wings. Adults are spotted and more chestnut on their underparts. Males have a pale grey head and uppertail. Often seen hanging motionless in mid-air over motorway verges before plummeting onto prey in the long grass.

SPARROWHAWK: Females are about the size of a wood pigeon, brownish-grey above with a white ‘eyebrow’; males are smaller, bluish-grey above, with gingery cheeks. All have barring across their underparts. In flight, they characteristically ‘flap flap glide’, but they can also soar high in the sky. Well adapted for hunting in tight spaces such as woodlands and gardens.

BUZZARD: Larger than a crow, often seen sitting on telegraph posts. In flight, they have long broad wings with obvious ‘fingers’ and a short, rounded tail. The underwing is often pale with dark tips and a dark mark at the ‘elbow’. Can sometimes catch rabbits but mostly this is a scavenger. They soar up on thermals on fine spring days; that’s when they might drift over gardens, mewing like a cat.

RED KITE: The size of a buzzard but with longer, thinner wings. The long forked tail, reddish above, is a giveaway, twisting constantly like a rudder. It has an effortless flight, mostly gliding but with occasional deep flaps as they drift for hours over countryside at a snail’s pace. It remains the ultimate scavenger, clearing up carrion from the countryside and road verges.

There are a number of other types of birds of prey in the UK but all are creatures of wild places, from the tiny merlin to the sky-plummeting peregrine, the magnificent golden eagle and the fish-eating osprey (which returned naturally to our shores in the 1950s). Some of our birds of prey still suffer relentless persecution today, especially the hen harrier.