[in the hills]

We have a female sparrowhawk paying constant 'visits' to our bird table. She is beautiful but what do I do?

Should I stop feeding the birds for awhile ..... our table is very busy and I know they rely on breakfast, lunch and dinner .... but feeling a bit guilty that we're making it so easy for the sparrowhawk?   

Should I continue to feed but move the table hoping to confuse Mrs. Hawk? 

Any tips on how to deter her or at least make it a bit safer for the teeny birds? 

Or maybe she'd take them anyway from somewhere or other so in the scheme of things it doesn't matter?

Any thoughts?   She is here several times each hour from dawn til dusk.  Constantly swooping down and giving chase.

[waterbuffalofarmer]

You can get bird feeders which the birds go inside to eat and the hawks can't get them; You could look into it i suppose. What types of small garden birds do you have?

[verdifish]

You can get bird feeders which the birds go inside to eat and the hawks can't get them; You could look into it i suppose. What types of small garden birds do you have?

 


These arnt sparrow hawk proof I'm afraid.  They will just sit and wait till small bird enters or exits and nab them then. 

[Marches Farmer]

We had this problem and got the feeder inside a cage type bird feeder.  We hung it on a post in the middle of a shrub, to stop the sparrowhawk swooping in, and put a rectangle of badger wire just below it, on short wooden posts at about 30cm above the ground, to protect the sparrows and dunnocks that feed on the grain that drops from the feeder.  It's not perfect but we rarely see the sparrowhawk now. 

[nutterly_uts]

Hanging something across the middle so she can't get a full swoop at them might work - thread a CD or something so she can see it since you don't want to hurt her?

[Fleecewife]

I replied to this earlier but it was lost due to the BT problem.

Looks as if my view is the opposite of everyone else's 

How many small birds do you have?  How many sparrow hawks are there?   I would think you can't count the number of small birds, but there is only the one sparrow hawk.  This means you have a predator/prey balance, where there is room for small birds to be taken.  Were she to take too many, then she would be left to starve, so nature helps to reach a balance.
We all love the pretty little birds, but the sparrow hawk is so beautiful herself.  But it's not really up to us to judge a creature's worth by how cute we find it.  If you are feeding birds on your feeders, then you feed all comers, including the predators (and those pesky jackdaws).
If you were to cage off the feeders, the hawk would simply wait until a bird flew out of the cage. She will also continue to hunt along hedges, by scaring the small birds into taking off, so she can catch them.

I would be proud of feeding enough small birds that your area can now support a prey species.

This morning in the big wind, a juvenile sparrow hawk landed on my garden gate post, but the wind caught it, so the tail was blown up in the air, and the bird tipped right off the post.  I found it funny but I do have an evil sense of humour.

[in the hills]

Thank you for your replies.

WBF .... We have house sparrows galore (I think nationally that numbers are falling and the reason is that they are all here .... clouds of them), blue tits, great tits, coal tits, willow or marsh tit (not sure which ),long tailed tits, dunnock, blackirds, nuthatch, robins, siskin, great spotted woodpecker .... the usual bird table crew. We have lots of birds of prey/raptors .... sparrowhawk, buzzards, kestrel and counted a dozen red kite at the weekend. 

FW .... She is really beautiful. Maybe, for now at least, I will let her be. A sparrowhawk took all my neighbours doves a while ago. She didn't keep them for years but has more now. Maybe Mrs. Hawk is better off hunting here.
I will tell my daughter to read your post .... I think she shares your sense of humour! 

[Marches Farmer]

We have a resident population of house sparrows on the farm.  Every year just over 20 go through to breed the following Spring.  We feed grain through Winter only.  I think bird populations are far more territorial than the RSPB would like to have us think.  We rarely see a Goldfinch but our neighbour a mile away sees many every day.  SImilarly, we've never seen a Yellowhammer but a cloud of them descends whenever the farmer across the valley feeds his ewes.  I find it difficult to believe a high degree of predation will do anything other than decimate local breeding populations of anything.  Predation plus a bad Winter....? 

[lord flynn]

I don't feed the birds directly but they do help themselves to the chicken food. I have an almost resident sparrow hawk and have done for the last 18 months, a visiting merlin and have even had a hen harrier visit the garden. I also have a cat.


Since we moved here the small bird population is doing very well, much better than the first winter we were here-I have resident sparrows, wrens, blackbirds, robins, starlings (unfortunately), finches galore. Swallows and house martins also do very well in the summer.So I don't tend to worry about it-with Fleecewife on this one.

[Fleecewife]

We have a resident population of house sparrows on the farm.  Every year just over 20 go through to breed the following Spring.  We feed grain through Winter only.  I think bird populations are far more territorial than the RSPB would like to have us think.  We rarely see a Goldfinch but our neighbour a mile away sees many every day.  SImilarly, we've never seen a Yellowhammer but a cloud of them descends whenever the farmer across the valley feeds his ewes.  I find it difficult to believe a high degree of predation will do anything other than decimate local breeding populations of anything.  Predation plus a bad Winter....?

It doesn't usually work that way MF.  If there is a high number of predators, they have grown in response to enough food ie plenty of prey species. Very few organisms we know about destroy their entire food supply, as they are then left dead themselves.  So, they eat some to support themselves, then when prey numbers decrease in response to their predation, they have to move on or they don't have enough to raise their families, so no next generation.  Therefore the prey species numbers bounce back.  It works with all sorts of creatures from microbes up to lions.  It will also work with humans, as we are already finding - we have eaten more than our environment ie the Earth, can provide, so people die of starvation.

There might though be some species that suffer when the predator takes a mixed diet of varied species. But, simple maths tells us that the predator species will take the same proportion of rarer prey than of numerous prey as there is in the overall population - if there are only 5 blue tits coming to your bird table, but 30 chaffinches and 40 sparrows, it stands to reason that smaller actual numbers of tits will be taken than the other species.   So, if you don't feed the little birds then you won't be seeing them on your bird table because their numbers are low anyway, but if you feed them, then their numbers will still be low, but you get the pleasure of seeing them.

In spite of the predators here, we have, over the years, acquired a healthy and growing population of tree sparrows, which used to be rare when compared to house sparrows.  For a few years there were no house sparrows at all, but now we have a flock of those here too, nearly as many as tree sparrows.

[Penninehillbilly]

I wouldnt like to see a predator taking birds i was encouraging to the site, id feel i was luring them to their deaths 
Not sure if it would be fair to stop feeding them at this time of year, maybe move the table near to a hedge,  put a mesh canopy between table and hedge?
Just feed in mornings?, at least that would give them a start to the day.
I know SH's have to eat, but come summer, i wouldn't want to feeding a whole brood of them.

[Marches Farmer]

Years ago farmers and gamekeepers used to keep predator numbers low.  My grandfather walked his fields every week with a shotgun at the ready, shooting not only birds of prey but also magpies, crows, rooks and ravens. Now, with loss of habitat and predation by a vastly increased number of pet cats, wild birds face a set of challenges which didn't exist then.  Our local Mistle Thrush population was more than decimated the year ELS demanded hedges weren't cut every year, thus allowing the hedge trees to open out and provide less secure nest sites.  You could walk along the hedge line in April and see a smashed dunnock, robin, thrush or blackbird egg every few metres. 

Same thing is happening with unchecked badgers predating hedgehogs and ground nesting birds.  Buzzards have polished off all the adders and grasssnakes on the local common.  And so on.....

[lord flynn]

I do agree MF but I think there are so many other pressures on smaller raptors, them getting out of control population wise is unlikely-those species that also scavenge and have a broader prey base have it easier.


The bird population here on the Southern Uplands is excellent-we have all the birds that were lost in the 70s/80s farming practices in England. We have everything here-kingfishers, finches, woodcock and snipe, buzzards, all the raptors I mentioned, fieldfares, ravens,, lapwings and curlew, yellowhammers, flocks of chaffinches and goldfinches, sparrows and thrushes, owls and loads more that I can't identify. Arable is not prevalent here and neither is shooting in any major way. Crows and ravens keep the buzzards under control although i have seen an increase in magpies and jays in the last year in the forest-I live on the edge of a moor.
I have a healthy vole population too.

[Marches Farmer]

I take your point but when you see 13 buzzards circling a field you don't hold out much hope for the red-legged partridge sitting in it.

[zwartbles]

I would rather watch this than shoot it !