Hi, just saw a hawk or some such but can’t quite work out which it was. Was having a disagreement with an adult crow. Was fractional smaller, was dark colouring (due to angle and height I couldn’t see exact). Had a smooth squared/rectangluar tail and pointed sleek wings. Had a high pitched repetitive chirp noise. Was trying to either land on the high Ariel thing or the crow has a nest but I know the crow babies are all fully fledged and nearly adult size now so not in the nest. Think it may have been a Hobby as the images I’m finding for the bird in flight look like that but going on alarm sound on a bird app I have it sounded like a female kestrel. I’m in Essex SS8 postcode if that helps.
Hi Hobgoblin
More likely to be a kestrel than a hobby, simply on numbers of each. Also, crow is significantly larger than hobby. Could also be a Sparrowhawk, from your description of size. Sorry I've not narrowed it down much
I was wondering on possibly a juvenile kestrel as it had the high distress chirp and wasn’t pale underneath. Was just very sleek with the ‘bent’ wing shape.
Depends on definition of "fractional" and how accurate the often difficult 'size gauge' is. I was thinking buzzard as that's the most common crow v raptor altercation here. Fits most of the description in the paragraph. Perergrine is poss given the size, but whatever it was, sounds more falcon than hawk.
They were flying virtually over head when the crow was chasing it off and wing span wise I’d say the hawk/falcon was was probably an inch or 2 either side smaller but completely different wing style to the crow.
Obviously my rubbish picture isn’t to scale just trying to give a rough idea of how the wings and tail kind of looked