Sparrowhawk

I was sat in the dining room, working, when I heard a lot of bird noise, mostly the sound of about 40+ birds taking off together. Then the magpies kicked up a real racket, which isn't unusual except, they kept going, so I headed upstairs to look out the window. There was a juvenile Sparrowhawk, sat atop an inverted Collared Dove, so I dashed down to grab my camera to take this photo, you can see it covering it's prey with extended wings, waiting for it to expire:
















Here, with the Dove deceased, the Sparrowhawk is tucking in, having made a substantial mess of the bird feeding area:















For this last shot I moved to the lounge, slowly parted the blinds and got a much sharper, clearer shot of the Sparrowhawk eating. The bird stayed in the garden for about 20 minutes before taking off with a now much lighter carcass, leaving me to clean up this evening:


















We had over the weekend counted a peak 14 Collared Doves which is a big increase from the 6 we counted last year. I'm guessing we'll get 12 to 13 at peak now. What was remarkable was that on the feeders above this there were still Greenfinch and Great Tits feeding as well as Magpie's and Woodpigeon's still wandering around the garden.