A day after the Bird Count, I was watching the sparrows darting from the laurel hedge to the feeders and back, when I saw a kestrel land on top of the laurel bush for a few seconds, it then dived into the bush and came out. It was so fast I could not see if it caught anything. Then a few seconds later it appeared from the side of my garden and flew into the laurel bush further along and came out, again I could not see if it had anything in its beak. I have many sparrows up to 24 in the bush. I did photograph what I took to be a kestrel last year but I do wonder if it could be a sparrowhawk. Do kestrels feed on sparrows?
My house overlooks a field where cows roam, in a village. Half a mile away is a canal.
Kestrels will take small birds but they are not normally pursuers of them . They are much more like ly to pounce on something from a height - hence the hovering that we are all familiar with.
My guess is that it was probably a sparrowhawk from your description of its actions.
TJ
EDIT Welcome to the forum. I see you've just joined
____________________________________________________________________
Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Hello Pamela and welcome to the forum.
I strongly suspect that your visitor was a Sparrowhawk as the behaviour of diving into bushes after prey is what they are good at. Kestrels more often tend to hover in one place before swooping down. Kestrels eat voles, small birds and frogs and toads.
It is always a dramatic sight to witness a bird of prey in action in your own garden and it shows that you have a healthy bird population.
CJ