Sparrowhawk - How Cute 😉

I know it's not "cute", but raptors are just so cool, aren't they?!

Always annoying when someone eats at your table and leaves you the bill.

Nice. I found out we have a neighbourhood sparrowhawk when there was a stripey flash and a sparrow burst into a ball of feathers.  It flew through a narrow gap as though Tom cruise were piloting it.

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I once saved a small bird (gold finch or similar) from our cat. I took the bird up the road away from the cat and placed it on a wall. It appeared unharmed so waited for it to compose itself. Eventually it flies off about 10 meters up before quickly changing direction and heading back towards me. At this point a sparrow hawk plucks it out the air a few feet in front of me, in one motion spins 180 degrees and disappears with the smaller bird. One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen.

Ooh that’s a good one andy_sweet

Closest I’ve got is thinking “sounds like a blackbird alarm call, better not be my cat bothering them”, step out the back door, sparrowhawk with blackbird in talons zips over fence two or three feet from my face. And by “zips” I should really say just scrapes over. Blackbird being rather large for a sparrowhawk!!!

Stunning footage from the Beeb

Blackbird being rather large for a sparrowhawk!!!

Ours likes collared doves and wood pigeons. Terrible zoomed phone pic:

The one that occasionally visits our feeder. Lives in the woods at the end of the estate. As I was driving to work one day it darted left to right in front of the car in front of me snatched a bird then darted right to left in front of me and back into the woods.

Also saw this one having a bath in a puddle in front of the van at a railway access track at robroyston

I once got as close as 2m to one on the ground devouring a pigeon it had just caught, amazing creatures

<p style="padding-left: 40px;">The things you see when you're working from home.</p>

This was last year, feel like I’m providing a fly through experience..

Not a sparrowhawk, but heres a snip of a video of the female Perigrine on the Forth Bridge. I've worked up there for years and always enjoyed watching them hunt. Watching the pigeons take cover and one Perigrine trying to flush them off the steel while the other circled above. Or watching pigeons flying then exploding into a cloud of feathers 75m up. They used to snack at the top of inchgarvie cantilever on racing pigeons and bar tailed godwit.

I recall years ago coming over a crest on a trail to be faced with a sparrowhawk that must just have caught, but not despatched, a pigeon. The interruption gave the pigeon the chance it needed and it took off straight past me. In hot pursuit was the sparrowhawk. Now I know that animals don't experience emotion in the human sense, but that bird looked properly pissed of.

Visiting a friend once we heard a commotion outside and looked out to see a sparrowhawk grappling with a magpie almost as large as itself!

They were rolling around on the flat roof of the shared block of garages, hawk with its claws in the magpie's neck feathers but not with enough purchase to go for the kill. Eventually they rolled far enough to fall off the edge of the roof 😂

They broke apart in midair - magpie shot off in one direction and the somewhat ruffled sparrowhawk in the other.

Doing Gods work with pigeons.....

Great Family Centre too.

Just try and avoid Clare......

We have one drop by to eat from time to time - it's not why I have bird feeders, but I'm aware it's not just the little birds that'll come... 🙂 Sometimes see it diving into the hedge the sparrows hide in, pretty impressive.

This one time, we were reading in the garden when I got a sense of movement, something heading towards me and... Not a waft of air, but a sense of the air being furiously stirred that flew off to my left. Turned left and there was Mr (or Mrs) Sparrowhawk perched on the end of the hammock frame looking pissed off that I was sitting in front of whatever gap in the hedge it liked to spring through and kill things from. Could easily have decided to take my face clean off. 🙂

I don't know what this is but I like it. 🙂

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1673437617625366531?s=20

last year i was doing my first ride of the year on my road bike and was cycling down a country lane. i saw a sparrowhawk on the side of the road having caught a pigeon. i recognized it by its long legs like a kestrel on stilts. anyhoo i kept cycling as i didn't want to scare it away. was chuffed  to bits to see one as it was my first sighting of one 🙂

i love raptors 😀

 I know that animals don’t experience emotion in the human sense

I think they do - maybe less sophisticated due to lesser intelligence etc... but exactly the same process and outcome.

Always annoying when someone eats at your table and leaves you the bill.

🤣🎩👍🏼👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

@pondo - that’s a Harris hawk; American raptor, very common bird in hawking, they’re easy to train, and happy working with people. Falcons are more difficult.

On my way home from meeting my partner late one afternoon there was a commotion as a peregrine chased a pigeon into a recess in the front of a big office building right in front of us, skidding across the pavement, the peregrine didn’t have a good grip and the pigeon pigeon made a break for it, flying right between moving cars, with the peregrine right behind it, and the peregrine brought it down in the middle of a grassy triangular pedestrian island about sixty feet away! The whole episode lasted no more than a minute or so.

A couple of years ago, I was tasked with looking after the large storage area at work, doing pre-despatch checks, battery condition tests and looking for flat tyres or other possible issues. I’d walked along the clear stretch between two blocks of cars to the security cabin where I had my lunch, and there wasn’t anything untoward; thirty minutes later, as I walked back to the point I’d got to, and I noticed this:

Just to the right, there’s more feathers, and across the way, between two cars, this:

That happened while I was at lunch, and clearly the peregrine, and there were a pair regularly flying around, had taken the crunchy bit with the soft centre, before leaving the rest for later. I left the corpse where it was, and the next day, it had gone.

But not very far…

Oh well, it would get a jet-wash when needed. 🤷🏼

Don't mess with a chicken though.

I am very lucky enjoy hobbys over the summer months

Last year we had 6 together hawking dragonflys on a beautiful summers day.....sublime

We have kites, sparrowhawks, kestrels and buzzards over and through the garden at regular intervals every day