‘It proves this can be done’: Berlin the blueprint to bring goshawks to UK cities

A northern goshawk yearling male peers down from a tree canopy in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

Firing off rapid keck-keck-keck cries that rang out through a park in central Berlin, the goshawks soared high above the trees and circled before swooping down to chase off a ragtag bunch of crows that had begun to mob them from below.

“It’s basically a flying Batman bringing law and order to the city,” said the conservationist Dr Paul O’Donoghue, peering through binoculars at two breeding pairs of the large pale-bellied birds as they dipped and dived through the sky. “They’re like stealth bombers.”