Hitchin Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We profile some of these businesses and organisations regularly in a feature called 'Up Close in Hitchin' while also encouraging opinion pieces from our readers and trusted contributors, including the interesting Sparky.

So, read on for Sparky's latest piece, this time on the stunning red kite...

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A couple of winters ago I passed a small group of teenage boys in Bunyan Road who were talking excitedly about a big bird they had just seen flying overhead: "it looked like an eagle" one of them exclaimed.

This brief encounter stuck in my mind.

No, not for the stereotype-busting demographic of this unlikely group of twitchers or for their highly likely misidentification of the bird - it was memorable because the likeliest species of large raptor they had just witnessed soaring high above our beloved town simply shouldn't have been there.

And I don't mean it shouldn't have been there above Bunyan Road, I mean it shouldn't have been there or anywhere nearby, at all.

The red kite (Milvus milvus) is a large and graceful bird of prey and is easily distinguished by its attractive red brown plumage and highly distinctive forked tail.

Although appearing uniformly dark when viewed from below against the light of the sky, their bowed underwings actually carry a complex combination of colours and patterns: black fingered tips, dark marks at the wing bend, white detailing and fine red front primary feathers.

With a body up to 70cm in length and with at least a 1.5 metre wingspan, the kite is larger than our other local and more common local birds of prey, notably the smaller and hovering kestrel, the speeding sparrowhawk and the languorous buzzard (Buteo buteo).

It is the latter with which the kite can be often confused, especially in flight at some distance, but once you know what to look for this knowledge could give you the opportunity to unleash your inner Bill Oddie and impress the family on that Boxing Day stroll.

The red kite is a master soarer and will glide effortlessly using that highly mobile forked tail to steer, so watch out for this. And if you see the gliding bird end-on, its wings will be held fairly flat.

The buzzard soars too, also capitalising on the effort-free effect of thermals, up-currents and the breeze, but when gliding its wings are held in a much more pronounced 'V' shape. Its tail is also less mobile than the kite's, as well as being shorter and more fan shaped.

Look out for these differences if you can and you are well on your way to telling them apart.

Also take the opportunity to get up close or use binoculars to really appreciate the beauty of the red kite's markings, its yellow eyes, purposeful beak and talons.

It really does looks like an eagle. You we're right, lads.

The song of both birds is a far-carrying high-pitched keening or mewing which can be an atmospheric accompaniment to any walk, summer or winter.

The task of telling these two beautiful birds of prey apart in the skies around Hitchin is a relatively new problem, however, and let's be honest- it's a nice problem to have.

But you would only need to go back 30 years or so to have no kites to confuse with buzzards.

Due to changes in farming methods, persecution, and habitat loss, the number of kites in Britain had been dwindling for a couple of hundred years to just a handful of breeding pairs in the 1980s.

At this stage they were one of only three globally threatened species resident here in the UK.

Reintroductions of the bird started in earnest over thirty years ago in its former strongholds, including central Wales, Yorkshire and Scotland.

Closer to home, thirteen young birds, brought in from Spain, were released into the Chilterns in July 1990.

As Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England said on the recent anniversary of this event: 'the pioneering reintroduction in the Chilterns stands out as a true conservation success story'.

There are now estimated to be over 10,000 red kites residing across every county in the UK, including over 2000 breeding pairs.

And with greater awareness from the public and protection from the law, there is growing confidence that it is here to stay.

Now, where to see the kite locally, you might ask. Well, the short answer is 'in the sky, anywhere'. And I am not joking.

On a walk yesterday morning I saw one up close and gliding over Waterdell Lane in St Ippollitts and then even nearer home in the afternoon, soaring high above Stormont Road.

They are certainly becoming bolder and venturing further away from their nests, which are often untidy large platforms made of twigs and even rubbish, high in the canopies of woods on the edge of farmland.

To see them soaring in more natural surrounds, try the edges of Wain Wood and Hitch Wood in Preston and in our beloved local Chilterns: from Pegsdon Hills in the west to the Weston Hills in the east. And anywhere in between.

They are adept scavengers, and a couple of hundred years ago they were a familiar site on London's streets, busy clearing away the rotting rubbish.

That food source has now gone but its modern equivalent is carrion so your best chance of seeing them on the ground today is anywhere where there might be the rotting carcasses of any animal - if they can battle their way through the rooks and crows, that is.

They will occasionally take small live prey such as rabbits and other rodents and occasionally small birds, but one gets the impression that this seems a bit too much like hard work for this arch opportunist.

Oh, and like buzzards, they do like a nice juicy earthworm and only recently I saw a large 'wake' of kites in a tree and on the ground in a freshly ploughed field near Ley Green.

It would appear that it was the worms they were after. Hardly a feeding frenzy, but the sheer number was both impressive and heartening.

Historians also believe that it is the graceful soaring of the magnificent kite that gave the child's toy its name, not the other way round. Just as it should be.

The red kite: from near extinction to everywhere.

Now that is a good news story and a genuine reason to celebrate in these challenging times.