Harry

The last two evenings, both times at around 7pm, Harry the sparrowhawk has been on his favourite perch on the balustrade of the ramp that leads down from the house to the garden. From it, he has a good view of the back garden and of the comings-and-goings of the small birds that come to our feeders.

I'm not sure how well Harry fares out of our garden as I've only found two small piles of feathers on the ground around the ramp.  This may explain why we've seen seeing much less of him recently. He's been reported by neighbours as visiting their gardens as well, and one told us that she saw him with a female.

This must be a fairly tough time for him. The small birds are coming into the garden much less at the moment, presumably because they're too involved in pairing up and nest-building, though only the blackbirds seem to have young as they're flying off with beak-fulls of food. The one time the small birds are busy at our feeders is the early evening, the very time when Harry's been visiting. 

We're a bit surprised and disappointed that we haven't seen the female but it may be that she has a quite separate hunting area.