On the Wildside: My main arrival has been a Christmas sparrowhawk

Also, it now seems rather tame and not the least fazed when I arrive at the window with camera and video-cam in hand. The first evidence suggesting a return, was a scattering of breast-feathers from perhaps a titmouse – and I immediate thought, ‘oh dear’!

Interestingly, this year the presence of the hawk seems to have had far less impact on the small birds that visit the garden feeders, and there are blue tits and coal tits on feeders only a few yards away. I wonder if they can tell that the sparrowhawk has recently fed and therefore is not, at that moment, a danger.

The first actual sighting of the male hawk this winter was on one of the tall, metal feeder poles during a recent storm and it struggled to hang on. Indeed, after just couple of minutes a particularly strong gust of wind appeared to sweep it up and away and it was quickly off, over the hedge and away to our neighbour’s. It is a stunning bird, and whilst I grieve the loss of some of my smaller birds, the sparrowhawk does have to eat as well.

And of course, many of the smaller birds themselves feed on lesser creatures and so on, and so where do we draw the line on predation? As I have written previously, ‘nature is red in tooth and claw’, and the return of my Christmas hawk is a mark of urban wilding as I call it, and a barometer of urban environmental quality.

In its own small way, this species being here in my wildlife garden is a nod to the reduction of deadly pesticides, and the recovery of the once-extinguished levels of ecological food-chains, the so-called trophic levels. This is very much what ‘wilding’ and ‘rewilding’ are about.

Professor Ian D. Rotherham, researcher, writer & broadcaster on wildlife & environmental issues, is contactable on [email protected]; follow Ian’s blog (https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/) and Twitter @IanThewildside