He was in 1997 a nominee and strong contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, though the prize went eventually to his friend Seamus Heaney; who incidentally provided an affectionate eulogy for R.S. at the recent memorial tribute in Westminster Abbey.

R.S. became an enthusiastic and very competent bird-watcher, perhaps especially under the tutelage of his great friend William Condry, his close neighbour while he was Vicar of Eglwysfach, between 1954 and 1967. Here Thomas soon became involved with the protection of the Red Kite in N.Cardiganshire, helping Condry to cover a wide tract of country from the Dyfi to the upper Teifi, and joining Capt.Vaughan's Kite Committee, the band of volunteers that organised monitoring and protection at the time. In his third-person autobiography Neb (translated by Jason Walford Davies as No-one) he speaks of the thrill that "would go through him every time one of these golden-red birds arose from the trees in April, proving that its nest was sure to be there somewhere", and coming across a nest some ten yards in front of him, the bird sitting on it. "The bird did not rise, and neither did he (the poet) move, but stared straight into the sharp eye of the kite, as it stared back at him".

Seeming a dour and rather forbidding figure at times, R.S. was on closer acquaintance a warm and humorous man, as I found during a fortnight spent alone with him and Condry on Bardsey in the autumn of 1978. He was at that time Vicar of Aberdaron, to where he had retreated to live beside his beloved sea, almost within sight of his birthplace at Holyhead, and in a stronghold of the Welsh language. Much of his life and work was devoted to protesting the dilution of Welsh language and culture by the overwhelming encroachment of outside influences, and the seeming indifference of most of his compatriots. This was reflected in his final involvement with Red Kite 'politics', when he wrote to the RSPB resigning his membership, in protest over the decision to release continental kites into England. A good many bird-watchers of all nationalities agreed with him, that the British Kite should be allowed to continue its own natural recovery, without artificial intervention; but in Thomas's case there was an additional dimension, that the re-introduction was removing something unique from Wales.

For the same reason, he felt obliged to 'distance' himself from the Welsh Kite Trust, when I asked him to become a patron in January 1997. "We can no longer claim Wales as the last stronghold of the kite in Britain, and doubtless there will be interbreeding before long", he wrote; and the integrity of the Welsh population was clearly a matter of profound importance to him.

R.S. was very much his own man. Wales and the world are diminished without him. We are grateful for his contribution towards saving the kite, and remember him with respect and affection.

Peter Davis