That's a turn up for the books

[Red Squirrel]

I sat watching a sparrowhawk this afternoon. It was sitting on the gate post in the garden. It sat for about a minute and was then bombarded by 3 or 4 great tits.

It shook itself and carried on sitting. The tits returned and bombarded it again. It must have had enough because it flew into the tree then away to find it's tea from elsewhere.

Has anyone else seen this before?

[faz]

welcome to WAB YES local birds will mob a spar or any other preator lots of noise to atrract others to the problem even though birds have a different call for danger they all know that some thing is up and all gang up to move the spar/cat etc on

[werdnal]

If you are surprised that the sprawk didn't turn and attack the great tits, it is very common for them to ignore little birds that are mobbing it.

Sprawks attack at speed and use the element of surprise. I have seen our local one here, fly down one side of our field hedge, startling all the little birds, turn at the other end, then fly back again to catch an unsuspecting bird that was just starting to think "wow that was close, that sparrowhawk nearly cau....." as it disappears in a puff of feathers. I don't think they have the instant speed from a standing start to out manouvre a great tit, but its the "hit and run" attack that gives them the upper hand.

[actionfinch]

the same happened earlier , except the one i see was flying high and flew into some swifts who conversed around it to scare it off...