Talons at noon as red kite pair topple the spare

Sandy Bedfordshire In an aerial tussle one raptor attacked from above until its opponent dropped so low it was grounded

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.