Sunday evening, with a wind that has been offshore all day, Katie and I walk over to the pedestrian bridge above the trainline and watch the sunset. Also there, though not watching the sunset but the ground below us, is a black shouldered kite. He flies past us, hovers, head to the wind, looking straight down, flapping though otherwise perfectly still; then dropping hovering, flapping, dropping. His wings are white against the setting sun, but for his shoulders clearly dark.

He drops to the earth as the sun does, and as we turn for indoors.