Let's play Sparrowhawk Snap

I'm sure that many of you will have indulged in a bit of game-playing over Christmas, from Scrabble to Monopoly, but here's a new game for 2017 - Sparrowhawk Snap.

The game arises from the fact that my new garden pond, with its shallow margins, has become a magnet for all sorts of bathing birds, and none more so than a Sparrowhawk, which visits almost daily.

Now in many years of being obsessed with wildlife, and having seen all sorts of wonderful things in many places, this was nevertheless a first for me - a sploshing Sparrowhawk.

But it began to be clear that there might be more than one visiting.

So are you ready to play? See if you can work out how many different Sparrowhawks visited my pond over Christmas. Each photo was take on a separate Sparrowhawk visit, but how many of the photos are of the same bird?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Hopefully you can immediately see that No. 4 is different. That's an adult male, without the white eyebrow and with a blueish back.

No. 3 is also without white eyebrows, but is browner, more heavily barred beneath, and without the soft pastel chestnut cheeks and flanks.

And that leaves us with three with eyebrows: 1, 2 and 5. Eyebrowed birds are usually females.

Number 2 has very clean dark and white breast barring, whereas in 1 and 5 the barring is smudged with warm brown.

So what about 1 and 5? Do we at last have SNAP? Well, I'm not sure, but I'll let you decide!

But that means I have at least four Sparrowhawks visiting my pond to bathe.

It reminded me of the research which showed that, for example, if you see five Greenfinches in your garden, that probably means that 50 are visiting over the course of the day.

Of course during Big Garden Birdwatch at the end of the month, you will only count the maximum you see at any one time in your hour. But Sparrowhawk Snap is a good reminder that your garden is probably home to more than you realise!