Earlier this year we were getting frequent visits to our garden by Sparrowhawks. Fortunately these fizzled out, and we then went for a few months without seeing one. This month (November) those visits have started again, and become much more frequent.
The visits have been, primarily, by a male bird - in fact, I suspect by two male birds. Earlier in the month, the visiting bird was very timid, and flew off as soon as it detected movement behind the window. More recently the bird looks different (it has some white patches on its head and on the top of its wings) and is extremely bold. It ignores me when I wave my arms around, bang on the window, and when I open and slam the window closed noisily! One day this bird visited at least six times. Fortunately the success rate has been low, and I'm only aware of three successful strikes - two Goldfinch and one Greenfinch.
One factor is constant, however, and that is that the bird only seems to come at times of very dull, and often wet, weather. This does not make for good photography. Here are some of my efforts - all taken through the glass of (mainly) my study window, or the windows of our conservatory.
1st November
This is the timid bird - taken from my study, of the bird at the end of my garden. This was with the old D300s whilst the D7200 was away for repair.
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| Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) (male) - our garden |
9th November
I was still working with the D300s this day. The first image is of the bird on the feeder pole, just outside my study window and probably only six metres away.
The next image was when the bird was near the top of my garden, just over three hours later..
It then flew towards me and landed only about 8 metres away. The light was absolutely dire here, and I was lucky to get these images.
22nd September
This was the day that the bird visited at least six times. I took some photos from three of those visits. I'd got the D7200 back by now.
These are from a visit when the bird landed on the same perch as depicted above, about 8 metres from me. After I'd taken my photos, I opened the window and slammed it shut again to frighten it off - and it barely batted an eyelid!
These were from the same visit, but from a slightly different angle. I've had to tightly left and right crop the last sequence and this next sequence because of intervening 'rubbish'.
Fifty two minutes after its departure, it was back again on the same perch, but in a slightly different position.
The last visit of the day that I photographed was when it stayed at the top of the garden for a while. Not the best of images, but at least I didn't have to give it a tight crop!
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| Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) (male) - our garden |
The result of all these visits is that many of the smaller birds have now deserted our garden, and so the Sparrowhawk has too!
Thank you for dropping by. I think that I might be offering some owls for my next post - it's not been a bad month.
