Hi, this turned up on my garden rose arch about three weeks ago - only about a metre and a half from my sash window and garden door. I opened the door carefully to get the enclosed photo on my mobile phone and the bird seemed quite unperturbed. Not sure if it’s a male or female sparrowhawk. It must have seen its reflection in the window as it flew at it a couple of times later as though it was attacking. Is it a sparrowhawk?
My next door neighbour but one in our terrace has several bird feeders, so I can only guess that is the attraction. I love the idea of having such a beautiful bird of prey around (there are buzzards and red kites on the nearby fell as well), but I found the corpse of a pigeon on my lawn today surrounded by a mass of feathers and saw the hawk fly away. It was a bit of a gory mess to clear up, but I put the carcass on the nearby riverbank so at least it could still be consumed. Do sparrowhawks tend to have somewhere where they regularly take and consume their kill? I’m not sure if I’m up to regularly cleaning up the remnants of the bigger prey!
In my experience a Sparrowhawk will eat what it catches where it caught it. Its usually only the females that kill pigeons ( they are bigger than the males) and I'm not sure how far they could carry the body if much of it hasn't been eaten. Obviously during the breeding season they ga=have to take food back to the nest for the young but both sexes may then prefer the smaller songbirds as prey then. (But I'm no expert)