I think it’s just one and it’s rapidly clearing the wildlife from my garden

26 comments

  3. Don’t. Let’s animals be animals.

    Anything you use to keep birds away will likely keep all birds away.

    My mother tried to get a fake hawk to stop this happening in her garden. Was a few weeks of her saying “it’s working” before she realised it wasn’t just other hawks it kept away.

  6. The little birds will learn to hide or get eaten, the hawk will move on and the little birds will come back.
    We had one in our area. The birds went away for a bit ,the hawk left for richer pickings and the little ones returned. Assume the cycle will repeat at some point.

  7. Find a peregrine falcon. I once saw one having a sparrow hawk for lunch.

  9. We have this and its great, I think of it as a ‘mature’ bird feeder as it caters for an apex predator as well as the usual crowd. Carnivores like sparrow hawks need a really good prey species population, its a great indicator that the local environment is healthy, and as they can only take the surplus it will have very little effect on the general bird population.

  11. Go outside at 5 am smashing pots and pans together and yelling the word ‘cunt’.

  13. If you are feeding the songbirds, is it out in the open? That could be leaving them more exposed and vulnerable

  14. You don’t. You accept it’s wildlife and that you don’t get to pick and choose what birds you get. I’d be over the moon to get a sparrowhawk in my garden. The other birds will adapt.

  15. No, Don’t do this.

    The hawk has to eat too, and it won’t come by every day and take a number of birds. It’ll be occasionally, and most fly by’s will not result in a kill.

  16. Begin teaching self defence classes with the songbirds, should that fail; form a miltia and defend your territory with your sparrow army

  17. Schedule a meeting with the Sparrowhawk. Tell him to stop being all SparrowHawky as it is ruining your enjoyment of birds further down the food chain.

    Ask him whether he has considered other options, such and plums and apples.

  18. Remember this time of year for the next month or so songbirds will hide away while they moult so they seem less numerous.

    Feed them all winter too- we have sparrowhawks and cats, magpies, rats, squirrels, all sorts that will prey on birds but there are always loads because we stuff them with suet and sunflower hearts all winter.

  19. As others have pointed out, this sparrowhawk IS the wildlife in your garden.

    But if you want to give the little birds more of a chance: move your feeder closer to a lookout point of some kind, have a larger feeder or have more feeders (more birds = more eyes looking out for predators), or put out pigeon feed. Most people try to discourage pigeons, but (according to the guy giving the wild bird care training I was on a week ago anyway) they act like an alarm system, because if they see a threat and fly away EVERYTHING in that garden and probably in the five gardens nearby will know because they are noisy bastards when they take off.

  20. Sit by your window closely watching the bird feeder, whilst holding a wizards staff and wearing a wizardy dressing gown. If you see the hawk approaching, quickly position yourself between you and the songbirds, jam the staff into the floor and shout ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS!’. The sparrowhawk will slam into an invisible force field you have just created and that will be the end of that.

  21. Dress up like a sparrow. A big, hench-as-fuck sparrow. Do a bit of light prancing around the garden.

  25. It’s called natural selection. If the birds aren’t capable of avoiding being eaten by a predator then that’s their lot. By detering the sparrowhawk in your garden all you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. Something will eat them eventually.

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