Britain's got talons: the writer raised on raptors

Merlin in the Highlands, harriers in the Fens, peregrines in Coventry cathedral " James Macdonald Lockhart on how he travelled the length of Britain to capture the wild beauty of its thriving raptors

There is a spring-like buoyancy in the air and the rolling countryside of south Warwickshire is filled with the see-sawing song of a great tit. A wood pigeon clatters through the trees where buzzards are nesting, sparrowhawks dash, and red kites float. When James Macdonald Lockhart moved to the Cotswolds five years ago, there were no red kites. Now these "least linear of raptors", which spend their time "unravelling imaginary balls of string in the air" as Lockhart puts it in Raptor, his beautifully written first book, are another charismatic presence in his local patch.

Many birds of prey, like nature writers, are thriving. Yet both are subject to surprising hostility, too. So it is with some trepidation that Lockhart is entering both arenas - writing an account of his journey through Britain in search of breeding raptors. "I feel quite anxious," he says. "Are people going to be reading it, writing about it? It feels quite precarious."