Five minutes of my hour to go and I realised my pen had run out. Just as I got to the drawer, there's an unmistakable series of short cries outside. Ran to the backdoor and a male sparrowhawk had brought down a bird, still shrieking loudly. Now this was more than two minutes - I'm retired, with arthritis, and don't move that fast- so the shock/injury hadn't killed it.
And instinct took over but the hawk wasn't giving up as I thundered toward it. I was less than six feet away when it let go and flew off. The blackbird flew up into the viburnum and then took off over the wall.
Yes, I know I deprived it of a meal but I couldn't help it. I'm always on the side of the victim and this wasn't a clean quick kill. If the bird had gone silent, I would not have found myself running out, shouting and waving my arms.
Time for the garden cane obstacle course to be erected and to move the pots with blackthorns and berberis around to provide more cover/protection for the smaller birds to feed.
No wonder the garden went quiet in the last quarter of an hour of my Bird Watch. That why I hadn't seen any sparrows!
Yeah but fancy being able to put Sparrowhawk on your submission. I'm green with envy.....
Every day a little more irate about bird of prey persecution, and I have a cat - Got a problem with that?
I'd rather have the sparrows... I know the sprawks are there and see them sometimes on a tree looking for prey. I've seen one stamping on top of my escallonia trying to get through to the birds as they escape through the fence panel to the safety of a holly. They are beautiful birds but it's a tiny garden and I don't want to see carnage when I look out of the window.
The adrenaline rush is gone and I'm shaking slightly. Time for a cup of tea.
I was about to start watching and found that a male sparrowhawk was sitting on the branch above the feeders quietly preening. Cut down the numbers of birds around for a while. I don't mind them taking a few garden birds, helps keep the population fit by removing weak and unhealthy birds.
My husband would have reacted exactly the same as you did.......he loves his small birds and dreads one being caught in our garden. I must confess, though, that I get tremendously excited to see any bird of prey around - my previous garden was postage-stamp sized in a town centre, so kestrels and sparrowhawks as garden birds are a new thing to me. Sadly, neither of these appeared while I was doing the Birdwatch (inevitably) so the scariest thing I saw was the canoodling pair of carrion crows.......those guys never cease to surprise me, they don't exactly come across as the most cuddly of birds!!
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.
We have a visiting kestrel every couple of weeks. On Thursday last I heard a bang and saw feathers flying and a kestrel sitting on our washing line with a dead woodpigeon below. Before the kestrel could do anything the cat belonging to a distant house grabbed the woodpigeon and ran off with it, claiming it was his "kill". The kestrel looked around (did I imagine that miffed expression on its face?!!) before flying off. (We have three indoor cats and there is only one other cat in the area. Because ours never go out of course, it has the freedom of the neighbourhood).
Our pair of sparrowhawks haven't been seen for several months. We used to find whitish feathers lying about some mornings, and once I disturbed one plucking a collared dove in the undergrowth! It never came back for it, so a wasted kill, which I had to bury in the border :-( From a population of 5 or 6 we now have just the one collared dove, so perhaps the 'hawks have moved on to richer pickings elsewhere. Usually it was the female we saw sitting on the hedge by the feeders (with the sparrows skulking directly underneath!), although the rather splendid male would occasionally turn up in the same place.
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not too sure about the universe..." - Albert Einstein