Am I right in thinking the larger female sparrowhawk takes larger prey than the male sparrowhawk (which only takes sparrow size birds) I think I might have read this somewhere but I am not sure
In both the 2003 and 2002 GM bird reports, there are records of Sparrowhawks drowning prey - a Starling in a birdbath at Atherton, and a Blackbird in the R. Beal at Shaw in 2002.
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Judith Smith
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Lightshaw hall Flash is sacrosanct - NO paths please!
there was something fairly recently about similar behaviour by Sparrowhawks in one of the birding journals, can't remember which off the top of my head but Judith may remember better. Either way it's a fair sized prey for a Sparr', bet the Lapwing didn't expect that!
just a note about something unusual today at red seas when i saw a f sparrowhawk take a lapwing out in flight nothing unusual about that i know but it then landed in a flooded part of the area and proceeded to drown it by holding it underwater for about 5mins it looked to me that it was something the sparrowhawk was used to doing when it caught anything of any size in that area , jimmy meadows