Sparrowhawk catches blue tit at Elveden Center Parcs

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!