Goshawk

Ho66es · Goshawk

tonight my father called me to say a hawk had killed a dove in his back garden and had been sitting eating it for 30mins, I drove down and watched it for another 30mins from the kitchen at a distance of maybe 10' or less.

My step mum even hit the window to scare away a blackbird and the hawk carried on regardless

I am uploading the images to my fotopic site, URL to follow below.

This was in Holywood Co. Down. perhaps you can say if its male/female young/old from the images

If you look at them all you can see where the dove hit a window in full flight from the hawk, sort of tells the story, a bit out of sequence, but we didn't leave the house until after it had left

An impressive sight and my father has agreed to keep feeding the wild birds in the hope of seeing it again

http://hobbes.fotopic.net/c1328055.html

Apperently is a spar not a gos

we live and learn lol

DitchShitter

Wow! F*ck! Look at the mess she made too!

Absolutely ye Dad should keep feeding the wild birds, mate. Wether in the hope of seeing another killed like that or not is immaterial. That's just nature taking its course there and the dove likely needed removing from the pool anyway.

In my own experiance of Sparrow hawk activity though, perhaps echoing the fact that they do target the slow and the weak? I find they'll hit maybe one to three times at a feeder station, then move on. I'm supposing they clear out the stragglers, see?

Bit of a dychottomy isn't it? We feed the birds and take pleasure in seeing them. Then one gets ripped to shreds in front of our eyes and that too is 'brilliant'!

Ho66es

Indeed, was great to see 'mama blackbird' as my step mum calls her on the lawn not 8' away barging the hawk for all she was worth

and last night an urban fox came and got the carcass

the food chain is a wonderful thing to observe!

Cant wait to get my own hawk

Sean

lucky man, getting to see that. looks like a large female to me, not sure how old it could be. dont know much about accipiters