The weather has taken a turn for the better. The fields have gone from liquid mud to walkable once more so two days ago Ani and I turned left through the gap in the hedge instead of right into the wood as we have done most of the winter. Wild daffodils are almost ready to flower, the first periwinkles dot the hedgerows with china blue and great drifts of snowdrops fringe the woods. We hadn’t gone far, just up to the little copse, when a familiar shape swooped overhead. I had brought the camera and raised it in what I knew would be yet another futile attempt to catch the grace and beauty of the red kite.

They have been close this past couple of weeks. Very close. They have swooped low over the car, watched from above as we have walked in the mornings and watched from the trees as I have passed. One even landed by the car and sat while I scrabbled around for the camera on the phone. Needless to say, the picture was poor… but the encounter was amazing. To be that close to a wild kite… something with a wingspan a good foot wider than I am tall. It is a gift, every time. And every time I feel a real sense of awe.But they hadn’t been this close! I saw a dark shape perched in the tree… always a wonderful sight. It launched into the air almost immediately, though. Then the great bird dived low, flying round me, barely above arms reach! With Ani still on the five yard leash and wanting to explore, I wasn’t going to get that picture either, though I got some half decent ones, and one that showed both the speed and the closeness… pretty much all I could do was try and contain the rising bubble of joy I feel in the presence of these beautiful creatures.

It was still there when we came back and I tried again. Now, this may sound silly, but it feels like a game we play. They give me the perfect opportunity for photographs… when I am driving or don’t have the camera. When I am armed and available, they are elusive. Or I get the perfect shot, but not quite clear. Or only half a wing.  I have always known I would only get that picture when they choose to allow it. When it is their gift.

It is a long story. It began with the very first weekend that Stuart came down to visit and we had an uncanny experience with the kites. The first day they followed us… they were everywhere. One almost flew into the car. The next day, when all our plans went awry, there were nine of them wheeling overhead and swooping down to land. We followed where they led all that day, being led to very special places we did not expect or even know were there. It was from that weekend that our writing partnership and The Initiate were born, even though we did not know it at the time. The kites have a very special place in our hearts.

Far too often to ignore their keening has answered a particularly important realisation voiced. Far too often they have arrived overhead on cue. I know very well that it is a human characteristic to read more into ‘signs and portents’ than is actually there. Perhaps it is simply coincidence. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels personal.

There is a strange sense of kinship, of wordless communication. When I am troubled, when life goes wrong, they are there. It is then that I see them the closest. They sit and watch, they line the road as I drive… and eye to eye it is as if they reassure me that all will be well, no matter what happens. At such times I am reminded that it was the form of the kite that was taken by the Egyptian goddess Isis when she mourned the slain Osiris, and in that form she conceived Horus, the Hawk of the Morning. As such the kite is a symbol of the bringing to birth of something new from the ruin of the old. Their beauty, their fitness for purpose and their strength seem an affirmation that life knows what it is doing, no matter what I might think or fear. Yesterday we walked the same way, Ani and I. Of course I had the camera, and of course I hoped… and sure enough the bird was there again, wheeling high above the trees. Then, after a long walk through the fields, we came home that way again. I laughed at myself as I looked up. A line from a song was going through my mind, “…if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true…”

And the kite was there, swooping in so low I couldn’t believe it. I was treated to the most spectacular aerial display of speed and grace as it rode the wind. Sheer, unadulterated joy… I felt as if I had fireworks inside… and a feather landed at my feet. And then the kite landed too, in the tree beside me. And looked at me. And though I raised the camera, laughing, there was a feeling of utter awe. And I was finally granted that photograph.

I was beaming all evening. Every time I looked at the picture. Eye to eye, that sense of kinship, that knowledge of a shared life was simply amazing. I do not have the words, nor am I sure they exist. All I knew was that it could not possibly be any better than this moment. There could not be room in the human heart for more than this.

Today the birds were not there when we walked past the spot where I had seen them. I could see two of them wheeling in the far distance, specks against the sky. No, I had been granted my gift and for that moment which I will, I think, cherish for a lifetime, I would be eternally grateful. A little further across the field we came across the body of a hawk, little more than a feathered frame with the wickedly sharp beak. There were birds everywhere, even a woodpecker, but the kites stayed distant.

We came back the same way and my heart leapt when I saw the silhouette in the tree. I couldn’t, surely, be that privileged three days running? Then… and even writing it tears are streaming again… its mate flew in and landed beside it, and they both turned their beautiful golden eyes and looked into mine.

For the next few minutes… a liminal eternity of breathless delight… we watched each other. Then one flew up into the sunlight and I watched it become one with the sky, a prayer taking flight. Ani, normally so active, simply waited quietly. She knows. She did not move until the birds were gone.

Every part of me was singing… electrified… conscious of the flow of perfection, of the shared and sacred nature of life. We walked on. No more than a few yards… before another gift. In the middle of the afternoon, in plain view, two hares… two of the most elusive and magical creatures of the ancient heart of Albion. They are in decline and becoming even rarer…Stuart and I saw one earlier this year and were transfixed. I have only ever glimpsed one before.

They didn’t run away… not even with Ani there. They played. They groomed. They were not afraid. I couldn’t believe it. Delight overflowed as tears as I lost track of time and Ani waited quietly; Ani who will normally bark at anything feathered and chase anything that moves, laughing.

There was I thought, no more a single day could offer. But there are catkins on the hazel trees, pussy willow showing the silvery fur of its breaking buds and side by side where the old Roman Road once crossed, a pair of yews, male and female, stand sentinel… and in flower, a golden cloak over the boughs. The yew is such a magical tree, with so much folklore, so many tales told of it…it is thought to be the tree of life in many of the old stories and its branches open the gates of the Otherworld. Above it the kite wheeled once more.

I walked home in a state of joyous disbelief… and the certainty that I had been allowed a glimpse of something too vast for my little human mind to encompass, too beautiful to contain in word or image. I had, for a moment, touched eternity through a life shared with all other life and with something beyond all life of which we are yet a part. We walk through this world and feel apart from it, yet it is not so. There are no barriers between the earth and its children, though we wear feather, fur or skin. Only those we create for ourselves. As we arrived at the front door, Ani and I, a kite wheeled, keening, overhead and I knew I been blessed.