A quick hi! and a question (1 Viewer)

Hi all

My name is Dave and I hail from inner city Derby UK.

I have no experience of bird watching but I enjoy watching birds as I plod around the local park with the dog. Is it my imagination or are birds making a comeback? Certainly around here, after many years of dwindling habitat, I am sure I am noticing more birds and more varieties - not that I am that good at identification but simply notice species that I have not seen since my childhood several decades ago.

I was prompted to join in here yesterday by one such sighting - is it at all possible that the bird perched on the top of my birdtable was indeed a sparrowhawk!! Certainly deathly hush fell over the garden while it was present. Any thoughts would be welcome.

I'll tune in again soon - who knows I may yet get hooked. At the very least I stand to learn (and you are never to old for that) and make my daily walks more informed.

Nice to meet you all

Cheers

Dave

Hello Dave and welcome to Birdforum.net

It is indeed possible it was the local sparrowhawk you saw, no doubt waiting for a tasty morsel to fly through your garden.

Regards

Welcome to BF Dave.

Haha...come on Darbysheer!!!
Are we the most represented County on BF?
Probably the gobbiest.....
Dead good, dead funny...dead Derby.

Dave me duck.

Hi Dave, a warm welcome to Birdforum from the Moderators and Staff.

Hi Dave, and welcome to the forum. Here is a photo I posted in a thread some time ago - it was taken by my husband, peering round a slightly opened door (we thought any movement would scare it away) and also through double glazed doors, so not a very good pic - but it shows that a feeding station is an ideal perch for a sparrowhawk.

As you say, after a visit or even just a fly-past, the garden goes remarkably quiet for some time afterwards! Fortunately we have not witnessed many kills, nor found evidence of them - but we have to accept that our garden is a feeding station for predators, since we have many feeders around the place.

Spot on

Thanks for the photo. Yes - I am more than ever sure now. Thankfully no kills yesterday especially as we have a breeding pair of blackbirds in the garden
- with one infant hopping around and the cats going stir crazy because we closed the catflap two weeks ago! Despite the losses to the cats we still manage to add one to two blackbirds a year from our small garden and one dragonfly!

Dave

Hello, Jadeic, and welcome!

Don't forget that the sparrowhawk needs to eat, too! And they've been preying on songbirds for eons without appreciable effect. It's nearest North American relatives, the Cooper's and Sharp-shinned Hawks, do exactly the same thing here.

And frankly, it can be fascinating to watch an accipter make a successful hunt and kill.

Hi Dave and welcome to Birdforum.