By lunchtime the skies over rural Bedfordshire had become an arrivals and departures board. Thin white slashes criss-crossing the blue trailed over the horizon towards Barcelona, Rome and Salzburg. The 11.25 to Katowice had dissipated into a wispy smudge. Then, an intense arrowhead, like a cursor on a computer screen, might have been the 12.20 from Barcelona entering our airspace.

Birds of prey do not arrive; they simply appear in the sky, as if they had been lowered from heaven. So it was that three red kites came into view out of nowhere.

Red kite showing wings at full stretch. Photograph: Steve Greaves/Getty Images/Flickr RF

Other raptors soar and soar in sunshine, but there was no risk of these birds vanishing into specks of oblivion. Kites are low gliders, pegged to the earth by invisible strings. Their wings are sails, and the wind is their lift, their tilt, their plaything.

Someone had lit a fire in the pony paddocks below the trio, and smoke spewed out to the west. The birds rose above the billowing mass, enjoying the easterlies, fingering the breeze with their wingtips.

Watching you: a kite gets a good vantage point. Photograph: Drew Buckley/Rex/Shutterstock

It soon became apparent, however, that this was not a harmonious threesome but a pair and a spare. Three times the one on the right challenged the middle one by flying up to it. Each time, a dismissive turn of the head and a clench of talons was enough to fend it off.

After the third tussle, it seemed the middle kite had had enough. It veered away and mounted the sky before freezing in the air, wings and tail flat and still, until the wind pulled it directly above its rival. In an instant, its wings folded back and it went into a stooping dive. The bird beneath craned its neck to see its assailant, tipped its beak, raised its shoulder and a crumpled wing, then fell into a tumbling tailspin.

The beaten kite flew lower, the victorious one climbed higher. Once more, the victor attacked from above and then a third time, until its opponent dropped so low it was grounded. One bird sat in the stubble, the other flew to join its mate.

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