Sparrowhawk
(Accipter nisus)
Many of us love the little birds who come to our gardens to eat the food we put out for them. Well, the sparrowhawk loves them too; they’re its dinner.
Some of us have had the disconcerting experience of seeing a sparrowhawk take a small songbird in our garden. They favour a dramatic, smash-and-grab surprise attack (sometimes even chasing prey into hedges) and it is of course an upsetting thing to have to watch.
But it is no reason to dislike these beautiful birds of prey. It is just nature. And remember – little birds kill things too.
If you would like to protect the small visitors to your garden, bear in mind that sparrowhawks like to hunt by routine and tend to develop set patterns for staging their attacks. So if you move your feeders around, and shift them closer to cover, you will give the wee birds a better chance.
Fascinating fact:
After bouncing back from a worrying slump in numbers a few decades ago, sparrowhawks began to get the blame from some people for the decline in songbird populations. Detailed studies, however, found that small birds bred just as well with sparrowhawks present.
As is the case with most birds of prey, female sparrowhawks are larger than the males. They can weigh twice as much. Females are big enough to kill wood pigeons while males focus more on small songbirds.
The males are blue-grey above with rufous (some say reddish-brown, others say brownish-red) on the cheeks and rufous streaking on the breast and belly. The females are greyer above, without the rufous on the barring below. Juveniles are distinguished by their dark brown upper parts.
Sparrowhawks are one of our more common birds of prey. They are birds of woodland and surrounding habitat, nesting in trees. Look for pairs soaring together in high display flights in spring, slowly circling upwards before diving fast.
The sparrowhawk is closely related to the goshawk, but goshawks are much larger, far less common and rarely seen. People are much more likely to mistake sparrowhawks for kestrels, but kestrels have narrower and more pointed wings and like to hover, which sparrowhawks never do.
Did you know
The male sparrowhawk is an attentive and responsible father. Until the chicks (born between May and July) are old enough to be left alone, he does all the hunting, feeding both the youngsters and their mum. Later, both parents feed the kids, and keep doing so for up to a month after they have left the nest.