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I'm not much of a twitcher, but even I tend to stop and stare at birds of prey. So I nearly caused a pile-up the other morning when, driving up the M40 in Oxfordshire, I saw a big buzzardy kind of thing gripping the breeze above the slow lane. It had pale white flashes on the underside of its wings, feathers prominent at the tips, and a superbly fanned tail.

"Christ!" said my passenger. "That's a red kite."

Two more of them came spinning out of the trees. For the first time I understood why kites are so-called: the birds seemed to flop and collapse in the air just like toys when the breeze loosens their strings. And I couldn't help gasping, because even a bird-ignoramus such as myself knew that until very recently the red kite had been extinct in England. It was like the old joke about London buses: you wait centuries just aching for a glimpse, and then three turn up at once.

The red kite is a scavenger, and in Stuart England it was such a pest that the King had them wiped out. A handful clung on in Wales, but elsewhere they disappeared entirely until, in 1989, a programme was launched to reintroduce them. In this part of the South-east the sponsor was Paul Getty, the cricket-loving billionaire whose estate nestles in one of these Chiltern valleys. The reintroduction has obviously been a success, and it was sobering to realise that this might be thanks to - rather than in spite of - the motorway. To a hawk, a busy road is a canteen, full of interesting snacks, freshly squashed.

It was a heartening sight, coming as it did at a time when our birds seem to be suffering. As this newspaper has indicated (we are offering a pounds 5,000 prize to the best scientific analysis of the sudden decline of the sparrow), there has been a mysterious shift in our avian ecology. Crows and magpies are on the march, but smaller birds are dwindling. The headline on the website of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which takes the stability of our feathered population as an index of how well we manage the environment as a whole, states: "Lowest ebb on record for many UK birds." On closer inspection, this seems unduly glum. The 139 "common" species are more numerous now than they were in 1970; and the 33 "rare" species - grebes, harriers, orioles and so on - have nearly doubled.

And in London, at least, there is cause for fresh hope. Yesterday, a new wildfowl park opened on the site of some disused reservoirs in Barnes. It is the posthumous dreamchild of Sir Peter Scott, the naturalist whose wild-bird haven at Slimbridge was a pioneering model of conservation, and who envisioned, before his death in 1989, the establishment of a similar sanctuary in London. On Thursday, the patrons - Thames Water, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and Berkeley Homes - threw a launch party. Fired with my brand-new enthusiasm for the red kite, I went along.

The launch was marvellous. In a disused bowl of rough wetland, wedged between the chimneys of the Hammersmith power station and the elevated section of the M4, stands a placid little Arcadia. Swifts boomerang through the air; goldfinches hang on the perimeter fence; lapwings flutter and whistle on the grassy banks.

It felt like the set of a wildlife documentary, so it was appropriate that the centre was opened by Sir David Attenborough. "It's a wonderful, idyllic, romantic dream," he said. "A dream that goes back to St Francis. A dream that human beings and wild creatures can live together, that you can stand just yards away from a bird that has chosen - chosen - to come to precisely this patch of water." The dream has been hard-won, the product of a 12-year business project. Thames Water raised pounds 11 million by selling the land for development of 340 smart houses on the northern perimeter: the wildfowl park is the icing on the cake. Local residents were sceptical, quick to complain about the new houses. But now they have new concerns: the bullfrogs yell through the night.

The launch had its comical aspects. Was this a formal opening or a tramp through the mud? Some people dressed as if for Royal Ascot, clutching their hats; others for a Pennine hike. And the centre is bang on the flight path into Heathrow: jets raged overhead, and drowned out the speeches. But the birds didn't seem to care. The sun came out, and we strolled into the reserve itself. In the international sections, planted to resemble the Arctic tundra or the South American wilderness, the birds have clipped wings and have been flown in. But out in the wilder pools nature is taking its own course: it's a bobbing mass of lapwings and plovers, mallards and swans, herons and geese of all kinds (and all nationalities).

# posted by Medical Information : 2:29 AM