Country diary: an awesome predator appears over the Peak District

Crowden, Derbyshire: There it floated, a bearded vulture, massive, glamorous, so expressive of European wildernessA vulture in the middle of England? A wild, free-flying nine-foot-winged bird of the Alps and Pyrenees; a bone-eating, tortoise-dropping inhabitant of wolf-haunted montane crags; here over the Derbyshire moors, with their grouse and their sadly piping pipits – the very idea seems somehow momentous. Related: Birdwatchers flock to Peak District after rare sighting of bearded vult