Sparrowhawk sits in a garden in Fetcham, Surrey. — ‘The svelte sparrowhawk, *Accipiter nisus*, with its short rounded wings and long tail, is built for quick sprints in woodland.’ Photograph: Oliver Dixon/REX/Shutterstock

Country diary: The day I made eye contact with a sparrowhawk

This article is more than 2 years old

Allendale, Northumberland: I’d heard them about and seen the signs, but nothing prepares you for the close shave

As we have had no snow this year – so far – there are no tracks to reveal which animals have passed this way. I have to look to other means: a fallen feather, footprints in mud, hairs caught in fence wire.

A dramatic sight, though, is a dismembered pigeon in the field near our house. Plucked feathers lie scattered in a wide circle like spume on a beach. The head has gone and the flesh has been ripped from the breastbone, leaving only wings and feet splayed on the ground. A drama unwitnessed, it’s a sign that a sparrowhawk has fed.

Only a female sparrowhawk would have taken a bird the size of a pigeon. The male, being smaller, preys on tits, finches or sparrows, not catching anything larger than a mistle thrush. The svelte sparrowhawk, Accipiter nisus, with its short rounded wings and long tail, is built for quick sprints in woodland, where it can manoeuvre at speed through the trees. Able to turn on a sixpence, it is thrilling to watch as it hurtles through close-set trunks with complete focus.

I had heard sparrowhawks calling in late summer as the young learned their way around a nearby wood. A messy nest of sticks will have been built in the dense cover of the lower tree canopy, the female staying tight while the male did all the hunting to feed both her and the chicks.

Males are blue-grey above with rufous underparts; females have beautifully barred chests with grey-brown rippling lines rather like a cuckoo. In fact, it is thought that cuckoos evolved plumage to mimic hawks in order to scare their hosts and get easier access to their nests.

Returning home at teatime, I round the corner of the house and startle – and am startled by – a sparrowhawk, zooming towards me just two feet from the ground. In that flash of a moment we make eye contact, before the bird veers off in a smooth arc and slips through the narrow gap between the log store and a wall. I stand there, feeling the quivering of air that is all the sparrowhawk has left behind.

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