AWe have not had snow this year, so there are no tracks to show which animals have gone this way. I will look for other ways to find out: a fallen feather or footprints in the mud, or hairs caught in wire fence wire.
The sight of a dismembered pegasus in a field near our house is quite striking. Plucked feathers are scattered in a wide circle, akin to spume on a sandy beach. The head is gone, and the flesh has been ripped out of the breastbone. There are only wings and feet left. It’s a sign of a sparrowhawk having fed.
Only a sparrowhawk female would have taken a bird as large as a pigeon. The male is smaller and preys on sparrows, finches, and tits. He does not catch anything larger than a mistle-thrush. Accipiter.nisus, a sparrowhawk that is small and agile, can run fast in woodland. It is able to turn on a sixpence and is exciting to watch as it swerves through tight-set trunks with complete focus.
As the young were learning their way around a nearby tree, I heard sparrowhawks call in the late summer. The sparrowhawks will have built a messy nest of sticks in the thick cover of the lower tree canopy. The female will be tight while the male hunts for food for the chicks.
Males are blue-grey with rufous underparts, while females have beautiful barred chests with grey-brown ripple lines. Cuckoos may have adapted plumage to imitate hawks to scare hosts and gain access to nests more easily.
When I return to my home at teatime, a sparrowhawk zooms towards me, just two feet from me, as I turn the corner of the house. In a flash of light, we make eye contact before the bird turns in a smooth arc to slip through the narrow space between a log store and a wall. I feel the sparrowhawk’s quivering air as I stand there.
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