Gardener said:

We have between 20 and 50 birds coming to our various feeders every day- fantastic to watch, but this number has attracted a sparrow hawk, who now comes every day to grab its own meal. This has included chaffinches, gold finches, three kinds of tit, doves.... Infact, basically anything except the wood pigeons I would be happy for it to kill and drag off. We have now moved the feeders to different parts of the garden, under trees, etc. The sparrowhawk now just makes a circuit of each area, flying right into the bushes and branches to grab its prey. Please can anyone advise what we should do?

I know exactly how you feel, gardener! I had a male Sparrowhawk appear for the first time in my garden yesterday (well, the first time I have seen him, anyway!) and it gave me the fright of my life because instead of appreciating what a wonderful BOP he is, my first thought went out to the little fellows I feed on a daily basis.

With that in mind, I've moved my feeding station and put it right in a big bush, which is next to a tree. I have had to do some pruning in order for it to fit but have left plenty of shelter should he come back. As much as I appreciate the Sparrowhawk has to eat, I would prefer it if he didn't do it in my garden (we live in a heavily wooded area so he has plenty of other places to hunt! lol). Good luck with your Sparrowhawk, there seem to be an awful lot of sightings on here just lately.

My name is VeggieBirdLover and I am a bird feeding addict :D

Hi Gardener .Unfortunately I have become an expert on sparrowhawks ! Like you I have had a terrible time with them targeting my garden birds .I keep my main nut feeders in a netted hedge of 3 inch sq nylon .This has been a great help .Also Ive a Garden eye balloon but that doesn't seem to deter the hawks too much .I think tall bamboo sticks in the flight path of a potential attack are a great help to the targeted birds .I hope this helps .The less sparrow hawks the better from my point of view .Although cats are probably a much worse predator .

Hi all. We do seem to have a resident Sparrowhawk in our garden in a London suburb. I never expected to see one and admittedly the first time I saw it it had it's tallons well and truly in to the wood pigeon as it plucked it's feathers and ate. A rather gruesome site. The second occasion I only had the remains to see but next morning it was back, perhaps to finish eating? It's sitting in a large tree. The only birds around today are the paraqueets, sitting in the same tree!! I'm guessing it's rather full after eating pigeon and therefore isn't too much of a threat today. It is an amazing bird to see and I agree with the other threads that we must have made our garden a bird feeding site right up the food chain. I do prefer to see the green finches, tits and goldfinches eating the seeds we provide!

help stopping a sparrow hawk killing feeding birds