More and more vultures gathered over southern Britain in the second half of last year. On 11 November, birdwatchers saw an Indian white-backed vulture in Richmond Park in London (above) and there were reports of another sighting there a week earlier. Royal Parks gardener Steve Read saw it mobbed by hundreds of crows, magpies, parakeets and even a kestrel. It might have been Bones, a young male vulture with a wingspan of over two metres (6.6ft), which escaped in August from Blackbrook Zoological Park, near Leek in Staffordshire, 127 miles (204km) away – although Bones is an African (not an Indian) white-backed vulture.

A vulture was also seen over the Beddington sewage farm, near Croydon.