Country diary: My dad and I, watching a hoopoe, finally

Hinxworth, Hertfordshire: It's incredible that one has pitched up just a few miles from my home, but we've been awaiting this moment for yearsA stranger in the horse paddocks takes me back to my childhood. I'm 10 and Dad has just returned from a business trip to India. He shows me a photograph he's taken of the most implausible bird. It has a breast the colour of pale sand, wings that look like they belong to a flying zebra and a flamboyant crest that's tipped with black. I am awestruck by the beauty of this fantastical beast.More than 35 years later, in a village just a few miles from home, Dad and I follow the footpath that leads out of Hinxworth churchyard in pursuit of a long-held dream. Just ahead, through a gap between elder and hawthorn, we spy the soil-aerator, the grub-grabber, the prospector of the paddocks - Upupa epops - the Eurasian hoopoe. A solitary bird that has presumably overshot the continent and found itself in unfamiliar lands, it looks completely at home feeding in the rough grass. Continue reading...