Crafty Sparrowhawk

[Alan]

This morning at about 5am, I couldn't sleep so I got up and had a quick look out of the window. As I looked out, there was a flash of grey around nextdoors conifer bush and sparrows scattered. Without seeing it clearly, I knew this was going to be a sparrowhawk, and sure enough it walked from behind the conifer ontop of the wall. I live in a group of terraced houses with little in the way wildlife habitat, and behind the houses runs a passage/alleyway which is about 1yrd wide. The sparrowhawk flew off (empty clawed) and dived straight into the passage, staight along, accross the road about 2ft off the ground, and into the continuation of the passage along the next block of houses. As there is little cover and a lack of any trees as such, it was obvious that the hawk was using the alleyways to ambush its prey. How crafty they are, and how did it know there wasn't any traffic coming! A town-wise hawk if ever I saw one!

[pheonix]

very crafty
someone once told me that sparrow hawks sit and spend 90% of their time planning their next kill (im not sure its quite true, i mean when would they sleep?!) but they are still crafty!

[Wolfhill]

I have also heard that they sometimes pretend to attack groups of small birds at feeders to see if they can single out an injured or weak bird to attack later during the real attack. They are very crafty indeed!!
Fergus

[Mozzie]

we have a very thick berberis bush next to our bird feeder. Some sparrows and finches flew into to it and thought they were safe. A female sparrow hawk landed on top of the bush and started flapping it's wings to try and flush the small birds out ! Amazing scene.