Unfortunately, one of the side effects of having feeders in your garden is like ringing the dinner bell for the bigger predators.
They get to know where there are large numbers of birds and just lie in wait.
The feeders in our back garden are near to bushes and trees, so the smaller birds have a quick retreat to safety.
For the past two years we've had Sparrowhawks (male and female) visiting our garden and they swoop in from behind bushes to get at the smaller birds. The alarm call goes out and they dive for cover. We've seen the Sparrowhawk actually fly into the bushes after them. This is towards winter time when the bushes have lost most of the foliage. Still, it's got some pretty sharp twigs to contend with, so it shows how desperate they are to feed.
Over all this time, we've only ever seen the Sparrowhawk have one successful kill. That was a Dunnock, which feeds mainly on the ground. It just didn't see the Sparrowhawk coming and didn't stand a chance.
Having said that though, we haven't see the Sparrowhawk for a while now. That could be attributed to the fact that the number of birds visiting our feeders from the back end of last year to the present time has greatly diminished. We could always count on the old faithful House Sparrows to visit several times during each day. It was literally a 'blizzard' of them as they flew in to feed. Now, we're lucky to see two or three at a time coming in.
So, whether they have found new feeding grounds elsewhere we just don't know. We still get the Blue Tits, Long-tailed Tits and Blackbirds visiting as before. We saw our first Robin of the year two days ago.
It's quite disconcerting, as we enjoyed many happy times watching them all fighting for perches on the seed and nut feeders.
Ho-hum.
Laurie.
