Bird of the Month: Sparrowhawk
by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd
‘Birds of prey keep out of sight like all hunters but, being at the end of the food chain, they collect poisons as inexorably as the sea,’ wrote Henry Douglas-home in 1977.
‘Fifteen years ago, it seemed as if the sparrowhawk [ Accipiter nisus] was doomed…but governmental controls of agrochemicals and the forbearance of keepers have given them a new lease of life. Its recovery, with the possible exception of the osprey, is perhaps our most praiseworthy achievement in the field since the war.’ Today there are 35,000 resident pairs in the UK.
‘Sometimes the spar-hawk wheel’d along, Hush’d all the groves from fear of wrong’ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Although gardens are a favourite hunting ground, such muggers are rarely caught in the act. B B described an attack on an idyllic autumnal day: ‘All at once there was an indescribable rush and bustle. A terrified fieldfare nearly hit me in the face; others streaked along close to the hedge, dodging and swerving. Then I saw the cause – a sparrowhawk. It shot through a fence gap and in a flash I saw its talons fasten on to a fieldfare. Away went the hawk, bearing the screaming fieldfare, clutched in its cruel claws.’ ( BB’S Birds).
In London, there are enough to make their presence felt. One left the dust of its imprint on my kitchen window, tail and wings fully spread. I expected a corpse but not a feather betrayed the crash.
Another time, my son called me urgently to the same window. There, on the next-door lawn, was a sparrowhawk, its wings ‘mantling’ a cock blackbird. We dashed outside and yelled. The hawk took off with a blackbird undercarriage.
Sparrowhawks are tenacious on a kill. Dave Part, among other distinctions manager of the Russ Payne Band (drums: Nigel Summerley, lately of The Oldie), ‘stood within a mere boxer’s reach of a hawk and its carnage’ in his Marlow garden. They are not always successful.
This column’s illustrator, Carry Akroyd, writes, ‘The sparrowhawk comes over the fence at speed and then looks thoroughly pissed off when it fails to grab anything on the bird table and sits there glaring.’
I’ve yet to witness a strike. In a Northamptonshire lane, one glided past high overhead. There were wood pigeons far to the left. I looked again and saw a cloud of white feathers. The hawk had struck. One blue day on Hampstead Heath, there was a green whirlpool of parakeets high above us and higher still a circling sparrowhawk. In Ken Wood on the Heath, a hawk flashed past as we fed birds from a bench beside a long, straight path – a barrel for the hawk bullet.
Sparrowhawks often adapt pigeons’ or crows’ nests. BB found they favour south-facing sites. Nearby will be their plucking platforms, also used as larders. They are not wasteful, unlike others of their predatory kind; and their eyes turn a fierce yellow with maturity.