Last weekend I had a short holiday at Center Parcs and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wildlife there. Not long after arriving a small flock of crossbill flew over and a minute into my search for breakfast the nest day I had been within a couple of meters of a treecreeper (no camera though!). On the Saturday evening we wandered into the ‘observation hide’ which has a good view over a pit teeming with birds (more on those in my next post) and while in there the ranger came in and said a male sparrowhawk had returned this year, after staying over last winter, and had a habit of sitting in front of the hide. Not long after he appeared.
My first photos of sparrowhawk that were more than 100 pixels across!
Sadly it flew off before I could move into a better position.
The next morning before breakfast it was a no show, but when we entered there after there were a few people looking down at the sparrowhawk spot. There he was.
He was looking up intently at the bird feeder above.
A blue tit landed on the feeder but he didn’t move. Just as I locked on to him I saw him go and lowered my camera just in time to see his wings spread out at the height of the feeder and then him drop to the ground. He had caught the blue tit right in front of us watching!
Annoyingly as you can see there are brambles just where the blue tit and its talons are!
He ate the blue tit there and then.
He looked up after finishing, but unsurprisingly there were no birds around to look at!
So he sat there looking full!
Cracking sequence Neil, site loads perfectly and fast on my Playbook too 🙂
I spent a few days at Elveden at the start of January and spent a bit of time in the hide on one of the days. It was almost like watching a zoo! I’ve never seen so much activity from a hide before. The highlight was a sparrowhawk, presumably the same one, failing to catch a bird and just sitting right in front of us for quite some time! It’s interesting to know that this is his regular trick. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera gear!
Stunning!
Great sequence and gives me quite a different impression of what Center Parcs must be like.
Amazing! Great photos.
I was there in the summer with the family Neil. Lots of Siskin around and I figured it would be good in the winter. Lots of friendly Muntjac as well.
Dave
Your photo’s are incredible Paul! Bet your glad you had your camera at hand, it’s not very often you catch a nice collection like that!
Peter
19th Feb 2016, been in the same hide at Eleveden and watching the sparrowhawk on several attempts to catch prey with a final success mid afternoon. Just an amazing sight. I presume this may well be the same bird several years on – he certainly perched just infront of the hide most of the day as his hunting spot and had a preferred feeder to watch and launch at. His attempt that was a success however was one launched down towards the pond area, a bit of a chase in the air to catch his target, and he then eagerly took his prey up into the branches to the right hand side to eat it.