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Murder in my garden today..... (1 Viewer)

JennyWren

Well-known member
As you all know, my neighbours moved house recently... and I was able to buy a bird table!

With the moggie gone, I was looking forward to seeing the birds being able to feed safely.... and without fear!

Today, I put out the usual foodstuff for them,.... came back in.... and minutes later saw a couple of blackbirds enjoying their snacks.

All was well and good, until I looked about five minutes later and saw some type of hawk (it was grey, pretty big and had yellow legs) eating one of the blackbirds!!!!

I opened my window and shouted at the grey bird, but it wouldn't move at all, it just remained there, under the table. It was horrible, I've never seen anything like this before... and saddened me to think that it happened! :-C
 
Sorry it saddened you Jenny, but I have to say it sounds rather exciting....
of course if I saw one of my Robins being eaten I might not be so enthusiastic.

Have you looked it up to see what it was?

Dylan.
 
Hi JennyWren. It sounds as if you had a visit from a Sparrowhawk and a female at that as they are larger and greyer capable of capturing somehting of a Blackbirds size. I waited years until I was fortunate to see one in our garden and then ended up with seeing three in one year which included a male and two females. Whilst it is distressing to see a bird get caught in this manner, I'd much rather it happened in this fashion as opposed to a cat doing likewise. At least the Sparrowhawk captures birds in order to feed to survive whereas a cat would do it just to play. It must have been pretty hungry to remain in your presence as they are usually pretty wary birds.
 
Hi Dylan & Ian,......

I looked it up today.... and Ian is right, it was a Sparrowhawk!

I understand what you mean about the 'eating to live' theory Ian (as opposed to being killed for fun).... I know they have to get their food from somewhere,.... but it could've done the decent thing and waiting till it was out of the way of my house! hahaha

It was a really awful think to watch, I just hope I don't see it happen again in the near future...... :-C
 
You should know hom much i envy you in this, because they only birds of prey we have in our tiny backyard are jackdaws. So not much exciting. (Not to tear down your beautiful pic, Dylan)

I have to travel some miles to see some buzzards and harriers. But nevertheless, this story reminded me of a girl in my class telling the same story in disgust while my biology-teacher and i were very excited hehe.

Erik
-----------------------

One day I'll fly away
 
Sorry to hear about your upsetting experience JennyWren.

Remember it is a tough world out there and it is all about the survival of the fittest. It is very likely that your victim was old or ill. Far better that your bird goes to good use to feed a bird of prey than to someones spoilt cat that very likely would have a tin of food left for it on the kitchen floor when it returned home.

burhinus
 
Magpie massacre

Today I witnessed four magpies in the garden fighting in pairs, one pair fought fiercely for twenty minutes or more, the other pair only fought briefly.

The looser was pinned upside down by his opponent, and at times just lay there without moving. The loser was severely pecked and bloodied around its legs. At times one of the other pair would hang around the two fighting birds as though egging the attacker on. Eventually the dominant bird seemed to loose interest and the damaged bird made a sort of recovery and flew off to the nearest hedge. I haven't seen it since.

I assume this was a territorial dispute, but it was pretty fierce stuff. Is this common behaviour for magpies. I have some rather poor photos which I will try and attach as a sequence.

Mike
 

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Please prepare yourself for this occurring again as once you get into breeding season and there are young sparrowhawks to be fed, you might see this more often. Just remember it is all a part of nature and the circle of life.
 
Tidal Flat said:
I haven't seen it since.

Even if not directly killed by the attack, its loss of position in the Magpie hierarchy is probably enough for it to die - read a book The Magpies by TR Birkhead, which stated that Magpies attacked like this normally die within a few days
 
Tidal Flat said:
Today I witnessed four magpies in the garden fighting in pairs, one pair fought fiercely for twenty minutes or more, the other pair only fought briefly.

The looser was pinned upside down by his opponent, and at times just lay there without moving. The loser was severely pecked and bloodied around its legs. At times one of the other pair would hang around the two fighting birds as though egging the attacker on. Eventually the dominant bird seemed to loose interest and the damaged bird made a sort of recovery and flew off to the nearest hedge. I haven't seen it since.

I assume this was a territorial dispute, but it was pretty fierce stuff. Is this common behaviour for magpies. I have some rather poor photos which I will try and attach as a sequence.

Mike

As sad as that is, those are some very impressive pictures!

Taryn o:)
 
Hello Jennywren...sorry to hear about your loss but, at least the blackbird will be helping to keep the sparrowhawk alive in this snowy weather. And,as has already been said, it's normally the weaker ones which get taken thus ensuring a good healthy breeding population to pass on their genes in the coming months.
I often see both male and female sparrowhawks where I live but have yet to ee them go anywhere near my feeders! No piles of feathers or anything!
And to think I almost listened to my neighbour who said I shouldn't put a feeder up as the birds would just be easy prey for the sparrowhawks! Perhaps it's because I have my feeders actually hanging from the tree branches?

Good pics of those magpies...and I'll keep an eye open for that book too.

GILL
 
That's just what we call life. That's the way God made it work here on earth. The robin gets the worm, the hawk gets the robin, and as things like this go, the worms decindants eventually get the hawk. Maybe a cruell way to arrainge things, but that's the way life on the planet works. The Sparrowhawk is beautifull in it's own right too.
 
JennyWren said:
As you all know, my neighbours moved house recently... and I was able to buy a bird table!

With the moggie gone, I was looking forward to seeing the birds being able to feed safely.... and without fear!

Today, I put out the usual foodstuff for them,.... came back in.... and minutes later saw a couple of blackbirds enjoying their snacks.

All was well and good, until I looked about five minutes later and saw some type of hawk (it was grey, pretty big and had yellow legs) eating one of the blackbirds!!!!

I opened my window and shouted at the grey bird, but it wouldn't move at all, it just remained there, under the table. It was horrible, I've never seen anything like this before... and saddened me to think that it happened! :-C
Hi Jennie,I have only witnessed 1 catch in 20 yrs by a female.You may never see another.They come into our garden -mostly in Spring but I have only seen 1 catch.
I have seen many birds killed by our local felines.
 
Speaking of predation, we had a whole brood of Kingfishers near our house on the local river a few years ago. The next door neighbours' dog killed all the young birds as soon as they fledged. I thought this was mighty unusual, I wouldn't have thought a dog could catch a kingfisher, (even a young one) but it kept bringing them back until there weren't any left. The neighbours were part of that group of people who seem to think it's okay to turf your dog out and let it wander the streets all day, so it kept coming up to me in the garden with yet another young kingfisher.
 
I doubt if Jenny Wren will read any of these new posts because the original one was posted October 2002 and she hasn't been to BF since 8 th Feb 2004.
 
White*Kite said:
Speaking of predation, we had a whole brood of Kingfishers near our house on the local river a few years ago. The next door neighbours' dog killed all the young birds as soon as they fledged. I thought this was mighty unusual, I wouldn't have thought a dog could catch a kingfisher, (even a young one) but it kept bringing them back until there weren't any left. The neighbours were part of that group of people who seem to think it's okay to turf your dog out and let it wander the streets all day, so it kept coming up to me in the garden with yet another young kingfisher.


:C you should of kidnapped the mutt and dumped it in a field miles from home, or give it to a cat and dog shelter!

as for sparrow hawks - they are getting more and more common around here, saw them the past two times i have been birding and getting reports from workmates who have seen them hunting/eating also. but remember magpies are responsible for the deaths of more young birds than you could imagine in the breeding season.

as for sparrowhawks in gardens: yes, i too lose birds to them, but it's part of nature - unlike cat kills - wich are not natural, and could be avoided.
 
I was about to start a new thread, but thought I'd join this one instead, after reading about the magpies above.

Just went to make a cup of coffee and heard squeaking noises in the garden (the kind of noise made by injured mice/baby rabbits when a cat is playing with them - I did actually think it was a young rabbit). When I went to look there were two nuthatches lying in the flower bed underneath the window, side by side, both on their backs, and each pecking at the head and eyes of the other. When I went out to have a closer look, they both stopped what they were doing and flew off. I'm afraid I couldn't tell whether they were male or female, but didn't notice that one was any darker than the other.

Never seen anything like it. I assume it was some kind of territorial dispute? We generally seem to have 4 feeding regularly on the various feeding stations.
 
Today as we drove to work I saw collared doves in flight chasing a magpie.There was definately something going on and the magpie seemed to be on the losing end.
 
Yikes! I thought I was going to read a story about a group of crows doing their crowy thing in your backyard!

I understand your being upset if you had an attachment to the Sparrowhawk's dinner but I actually consider you lucky for getting such a close and detailed view of one of my favorite birds.
 
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