Been doing a great job of ensuring the fat, stinky pigeons crap all over other fences for the last week or two!

P1020771 by craigbart, on Flickr

It’s Dave.

Baby Robin?

Its not, I asked

Female sparrowhawk

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/sparrowhawk/

(ninja edited to correct the gender – the male has a reddish tinge to the chest – sorry martinhutch)

Tit.

Male sparrowhawk

My wife built a pond in the garden to attract wildlife, including a flock of sparrows which used it as a swimming pool all summer. She wasn’t happy when it turned into the sparrowhawk equivalent of Waitrose.

Spectacular to watch in action. 🙂

martinhutch

you owe me a new keyboard and coffee refill

🙂

My then 5 year old was admiring a sparrowhawk a few years back when it suddenly dropped out the sky and smashed into pigeon that had just flown by. Huge explosion of feathers everywhere.

“Cool!” was her response to the carnage

Same thing happened to my mum when she bought several pairs of doves. T’was a veritable buffet to the local sparrowhawk.

That’s a lovely picture.

They don’t usually hang around for long.

I remember parking up next to a hedge at work early one morning there was a commotion in the hedge and a guilty looking sparrowhawk dropped out of the bottom of it holding a sparrow.

Bunnyhop – it was annoying as the battery in the DSLR was dead so that was taken with a little compact through a blind from the upstairs window! This little fella was sat there for a good hour- fluttered around and re-perched occasionally but was keeping out of the drizzle.

A particularly stupid pigeon landed in the tree above it and it was great to see the instant focus of the sparrowhawk. Unfortunately the pigeon flew off…

guilty looking sparrowhawk

Could you sketch the expression?

pigeon landed in the tree above it

They tend to swoop rather than pounce, I reckon the pigeon was taunting it.

A sparrowhawk was inches from swooping into my face at a huge rate of knots a couple of weeks back. Awesome reactions from the bird to avoid a collision. Lucky really, because the bird was long gone before I even registered it.

Good photo, I envy you having a sparrowhawk around, I’m luckym if I see one a year.

Your Honeysuckle is frankly a mess – it’s making the baby robin look the other way.

There was a sparrowhawk sitting on our garden fence the other day, just like the one in the OPs picture.

When it flew off it took a piece of the fence with it

Think you’ll find it was a buzzard, hence it took offence.

That’s an ostrich

…hence it took offence

boom tish!

A month ago our local pesky squirrel was merrily munching away at the sunflower seeds in the bird feeder. To my utter amazement a female sparrowhawk came flying in for the kill and attacked it.
Squirrel was stunned and didn’t move far quite a while. A first for me to witness.

Had a sparrowhawk eyeballing me from atop my garage a little while back. They’re bigger than you’d think.

I was at home one day when I heard a thud and saw a sparrowhawk in a heap in the back garden looking injured and distressed, was stood on one of it’s own wings – was going out there with thoughts of having to catch it, or finish it off.

I got about 2 yards away and it took off at a rate of knots, up over the back fence, only for a buzzard to instantly take after it – it all became apparent how he’d got there.

It seemed to fly ok, and the buzzard didn’t catch it while I was watching! Lovely birds, shame we don’t see many!

Yep. we’re lucky that they seem to be increasing in numbers round this way, we regularly see plenty. Fab to watch them soaring over

eskay – Member

guilty looking sparrowhawk

Could you sketch the expression?

I’m a teacher, it reminded me of the expression that a 14 yo has when you catch them smoking, all it needed to do was hide the spuggy behind it’s back and go “What?”

Pretty sure its a Sparrowhawk that landed in my parents garden some months back, and proceded to disembowel a small bird.

Left a hell of a mess but fascinating to watch. Unless you’re a small bird.

I have some rubbish compact camera pics, I’ll see if I can post later

Edit: Also got some Peregrines that nest at work, so I’ll see if I can post them too

What’s this then?

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Bird of prey[/url]

Okay, so it’s a goshawk not a sparrowhawk, but on the off chance you’ve missed this video of how they move through small gaps…

[video]http://youtu.be/2CFckjfP-1E[/video]

As a bonus, it looks a bit like the bird above? Perhaps?

Word of advice, if you feed birds in your garden then move any feeders/ tables away from your windows. We learned the hard way when one killed itself on our conservatory 🙁

I’m a teacher, it reminded me of the expression that a 14 yo has when you catch them smoking, all it needed to do was hide the spuggy behind it’s back and go “What?”

😆
I thought it was only my late mum called ’em ‘spuggy sparrows’. 😀

Male sparrowhawk – as I mentioned above the male has a reddish tinge to the chest

As I arrived at home one day I went to turn into the opening of a gravel driveway near our house to turn the car around and there was a sparrowhawk in the entrance to the drive with one foot on the chest of a pigeon. The pigeon had a wound, but couldn’t have been too badly hurt as they both flew off as I pulled the car in. Sparrowhawk must have been quite strong because I can guarantee the pigeon would have been heavier. How on earth it thought it would be able to cart it off somewhere to eat it is beyond me!

They usually drag their prey to a safe place, or eat there and then.
Ime it’s the females that catch the larger birds such as pigeons and the males anything small up to the size of a blackbird,

Got home to a lot of feathers and this two nights ago:

Suspected sparrowhawk – I even tweeted Chris Packham (no less!) to ask if that was likely and got a reply *swoon* agreeing it probably was that or maybe a peregrine.

Was impressed the way it took the breasts and just left the rest.