Kitchen Garden Forum

Wow. I wish I was better at identifying birds of prey - a young one has just done a crash landing onto my lounge windowsill, and then made several attempts to get inside before disappearing

Fortunately, it didn't seem to have hurt itself.

Quite a sight, having a bird like that only a yard away, looking through the glass at you.
Sorry, but it was such an unexpected experience that I just wanted to share it with you

And may we thank-you for sharing that with us Caz, nature never ceases to amaze me.

Four years ago I was painting our garage doors. A peregrine falcon caught a wood pigeon and promptly crashed into the door next to the one I was painting. In the shock it let go of the pigeon which flew away. The falcon looked at me as if to say" it's YOUR fault" and then flew away.

The evening before last, just as dusk was falling, a young ring dove (not a bird of prey, I know!) fell out of the tree by the house. Not very good at flying yet by the look of it. I left it alone in the border where it fell, thinking it best not to interfere with nature, etc, etc, and it wondered off up the path and out of sight. I thought it would be reasonably safe overnight, unless a cat got it, but we never see any in the garden.

I had a quick squint round in the morning and didn't see it, so thought it must have got its flying wings on and gone.

In the evening I was clearing some dead lily pads out of the pool, and there was, drowned and dedd.

Of all the places I would not have expected to find it - the pool is raised about 2 ft above ground level. It must have been determined to die.

They are a nuisance, there are soooo many in the neighbours massive ugly conifer trees, but a death is always sad, especially youngsters.

madasafish wrote:Four years ago I was painting our garage doors. A peregrine falcon caught a wood pigeon and promptly crashed into the door next to the one I was painting. In the shock it let go of the pigeon which flew away. The falcon looked at me as if to say" it's YOUR fault" and then flew away.

apparently the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world, capable of diving up to speeds of 200mph. I'm pretty sure the pigeon didn't stand a chance if the falcon decided to go back after it!

In what is clearly a case of one-upmanship (for which I apologise), I went for a jog this morning and up in a dead tree looking across a nearby river was a bald eagle. We have more of them in Canada than they do in the US, so it is a fairly regular, though always humbling, sight

I was just bagging some potatoes up on the terrace when, all of a sudden there was a lot of commotion from next door. A fox had got hold of one of their ducks, but luckily after me shouting and clapping and running to the pen, the fox let go and made a hasty retreat.
The duck doesn't seem any the worse for her ordeal, i'm glad to say.

And all I have to offer is another juvenile ring dove, trying to cling on to the glasshouse guttering while I watered the tomatoes yesterday evening. It isn't floating face down in the pool yet....

Gosh, a bald eagle while out running, how brilliant is that???
I saw a sparrow and a couple of crows....

No birds of prey were around on our plot yesterday which was just as well as we had a flock of long tailed tits visit us. Hopefully looking for greenfly!!

We do have close encounters with birds of prey though - I think I mentioned before the one that flew into one of our plot neighbours empty aviary. It escaped and seemed OK in spite of a bang to the beak.

I thought it was a sparrowhawk but JB who tends to know about these things thought it was a goshawk.

I quickly took some photos - I always have my camera with me on the plot - just in case.

The photos are here http://glallotments.co.uk/Sparrowhawk.aspx

Great photos, Glallotments. I really must get myself a camera!
I think the bird on my windowsill was probably a kestrel, though I suppose it could have been a sparrowhawk - or even a goshawk, maybe!
If I'd been able to get a picture I'm sure that someone on here could have told me exactly what it was.

We have a lot of buzzards around here now. They're usually circling around quite high up, but I've had a couple of closer encounters in the last six months. The last was a few weeks ago when I was out on my bike. I was going round some bends where there is a wild pond just to the side of the road, and on a tree stump was what I first thought was a rather large garden ornament of a bird that someone had put there as a joke. Then I noticed its head turning slowly as it watched me pass. They don't half look big close-up.
That was one of those moments when a camera would have been good.

Beautiful clip of the sparrowhawk feeding on a sparrow. It's really rare to have such close-up view. Apart from the odd visit from a sparrowhawk here, our only birds of prey (and they rarely land) are Red Kites. But they're a pleasure to see as they really seem to be thriving and are spreading out from the Chilterns. Two year ago we hardly ever saw one. Now we see them at least a couple of times a week and often more frequently than that.