Raptors in action

[Norm B]

This morning I was watching the birds on my feeders while eating breakfast and I saw a flash of brown wings dive into a self  seeded prickly tree. I grabbed my binos, which fortunately Mrs B hadn't removed for a change and looked at the spot where the wings disappeared in to. A moment later a sparrow hawk dropped to the ground with something in it's claws. It was a young house sparrow, which it proceeded to pluck. I was glad it wasn't a young blackbird chick which has been fed by it's parents in our garden for the past week or so. I had suspected the hawks were back as I found a few feathers in the garden a week or so ago. Last year they were using our bird feeders as a pantry which although not ideal is preferable to local cats using our garden as a take away. Plenty of house sparrow chicks both last year and this and they haven't had their second brood yet so their future looks bright, but not so for the box nesting birds as last year was a flop, due to natural occurrences. This year has also been a failure but I don't know why as our feeders are kept topped up but it could be that last years failure means that there aren't the adults left to breed this year. Hopefully next year will be back to normal. 

[Norm B]

New news. I heard a squawking of birds, mainly blackbirds while I was on my computer, looked out and the local sparrow hawk had got a bird, judging by the amount of grey feathers it is a wood pigeon which is a shame as we have a pair visiting at feeding time, just glad it wasn't a black bird.