Natural Born Hunter

cookimonster

I was sitting in the back of my suburban house with the French doors wide open out onto the garden doing a bit of paper work, when suddenly all hell broke loose in the garden. The birds chatter went up several octaves and then suddenly deathly silent.
An old memory flashed in my mind and I knew instantly what was going on. There sitting in the middle of my meagre grassy patch was hawk (?, experts please jump in for proper identification). The only difference between this and the last scene I witnessed was that the hawk stayed in the garden and proceeded to pluck and eat the starling.
Previous hits where on sparrows and they were taken to the roof tops for the coup de grâce.
Here's a short video:
[IMG][/img]

Lastin

Sparrowhawk I think good video well done

Zoo4m8

Male sparrowhawk, typically fearless...

strangles

def a sparrowhawk but a female, has the 2 white markings over eyes as all females do,males don't have these.used to do falconry a good few years back & flew a lot of these

cookimonster

Thanks guys, did a bit of googleing and you have confirmed my suspicions.

I missed out on filming the first part of the kill, ie the shrouding with the wings as I was fearful of spooking the bird. But as it turned out the hawk was happy for me to stand in the door way and watch em work away at less than 5 paces.

Last week we had a buzzard swoop on one of our 'real' decoy pigeons, they did not take it but it was spectacular

Zoo4m8

strangles wrote: »

def a sparrowhawk but a female, has the 2 white markings over eyes as all females do,males don't have these.used to do falconry a good few years back & flew a lot of these

Dead right, knew I shouldn't have been making any sort of judgement before the first cup of coffee of the day to get the eyes open! :rolleyes:

Great video, there is the much watched one on utube of a sparrowhawk dragging a magpie to a garden pond to drown it.. Very determined bird..

dodderangler

Zoo4m8 wrote: »

Dead right, knew I shouldn't have been making any sort of judgement before the first cup of coffee of the day to get the eyes open! :rolleyes:

Great video, there is the much watched one on utube of a sparrowhawk dragging a magpie to a garden pond to drown it.. Very determined bird..

Now that sparrowhawk was a genius.
You could see the female spar looking around for help on killing the magpie and seen the pond, dragged the magpie over and into the water and sat on his head and drowned him.
Absolutely brilliant .
Anyone who hasn't seen it here's the link
http://youtu.be/R0Ycdt-agOA

cookimonster

The only evidence left in the garden was a scattering of feathers and the upper and lower parts of the beak........... very efficient.

yubabill1

Standing on a remote bridge over 20 years ago, I saw a pigeon approaching a bit above eye level, in the distance. He was flying erratically left, right and back again. Spied something behind him.
After a good few seconds, pigeon was quite near and could see some type of raptor behind him, cutting the angles.
Pigeon saw me on the bridge when about 20yds out at eye level, dashed to my left and suddenly became a silent shower of feathers.
crash-landed in field with raptor behind.
Left them a while and stuck head over ditch, peregrine pecking at neck, flew a few yards off the kill and landed.
Ducked down, checked a few minutes later, raptor tucking in, so I left.