I think of sparrowhawks as the cheetahs of the bird world. They are short-chase predators that rely on their speed and agility to capture their prey. Their short, rounded wings enable them to weave through cover in pursuit of small birds. And this is a predator that depends almost entirely on catching, killing and eating small birds - although sometimes the eating starts before the killing is quite accomplished. In the real world there is no animal welfare legislation that applies to sparrowhawks - they are efficient, highly-evolved killers. Sparrowhawks are never going to order a green salad in their lives - they just kill birds and eat them while they are still warm! And if they don't kill - they die.
And cheetahs have the same lifestyle except they are chasing down small antelopes, often young antelopes, on the plains of Africa, throttling them and then getting stuck in to eating their bloody flesh.
Neither cheetahs nor sparrowhawks are asking for our approval for their lifestyle but I, for one, am willing to give my admiration for what evolution has delivered. We are all killers by proxy (I except those of you who are vegan), so even though it makes no sense at all to look at the morals of the sparrowhawk, few of us would be in a good position to cast the first stone. Sparrowhawks do their killing in the open and their lives depend on it. Our own feeding habits depend on killing too, except rather few of us are involved in doing the rounding up, killing, eviscerating and butchering of our prey.
Having an avian cheetah in your garden or local wood is a privilege. If you admire the avian killing machines then please sign our bird of prey pledge to ensure that those who demonise them and wish to do them harm cannot succeed. You'll be joining over 110,000 others.
Tomorrow's focus will be on what is arguably the UK's most persecuted bird of prey - the hen harrier.
Hi mark nice to see someone else who loves this beautiful misunderstood elusive bird,theres not much i dont know about how it lives in the wild,
i have spent the last 5 years almost living with it in the wild and filming behaviour never seen before which i was told is vertually impossible,this pushed me to do it,theres to much to write what i know about this bird.my massive task is to change peoples out look on this bird.
like your self i have always thought of it as the cheeta of raptors,people are strange creatures they dont like to see the kills of big cats,but once a film was done on lions and her cubs were starving very thin,and are praying then for the lion to kill because they can see her cubs dying,then its acceptable then.
so im hoping when my film of their lives throughout the year is seen,and she has vulnerable chicks to feed they may sway a bit on their outlook.
Dave Culley. www.sparrowhawk-island.co.uk