Kitchen Sink Drama

                                                                                                                                                                                                  morguefile.com

Country creatures are pretty furtive. You're lucky to get even a glimpse. In cities and suburbia they are downright brazen.

My grandmother has a garden in suburban Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. I've known this place all my life. Aged five, I was roused one night soon after lights out and led into the dark garden. Something snuffled and grunted through the bedding plants - my first hedgehog. I found a fox sitting under a streetlamp when I arrived there recently. I stayed the night and was treated to an early spring dawn chorus.

Granny's had some magnificent kitchen window dramas. She was thrilled to see a heron a few feet away spearing a frog. It had waited in ambush on her kitchen roof. I'm often treated to roast chicken when I visit. One time the carcass went out with the bird-table bits the next day. A red kite spotted it instantly, flew down and grabbed it. Imagine a raptor with a five foot wingspan just beyond the soap bubbles while you're doing the washing up.

Red kites have made a comeback after a successful reintroduction programme in the Chilterns. I see them whenever I'm on the M4 to Bristol, where I headed earlier in the week.

I was greeted by birdsong in Bristol. In a back garden a blackbird was singing loud and clear above the inner-city rush-hour.