Home Patch: Enter a Sparrowhawk!

I looked out at the snow yesterday morning ... and there before my eyes was this male Sparrowhawk.

The bird sensed it was being watched, and began to turn its head ...

... in my direction.

It was my best Sparrowhawk sighting to date ...

... despite the fact that I was looking (and taking photos) through double-glazing.

I have seen a Sparrowhawk in this garden before, but only on a couple of occasions.

We have had hungry Robins, Blue tits, Great tits and Goldfinches in the garden recently ...

... and with such a large predator about, I feared for their safety.

Here is one of the tiny Blue tits ...

... keeping a wary eye out for trouble.

Then today, David took this photo of a Long-tailed tit feeding from our coconut fatball.

The Blackbird was hopping about in the snow, and so far the small birds seem to be surviving.

I wonder whether you feel protective towards your small birds? I love the concept of 'wild', but find I have to brace myself when it comes to Tennyson's phrase, 'Nature red in tooth and claw'.

I looked up Tennyson's poem, In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850 (Canto 56) ... and only then remembered with a shudder that 'Nature' in this particular poem is not the personification of a wild creature in our landscape such as the Sparrowhawk: no, it actually refers to us as a race of human beings. 

So what set me thinking? Well, two things, triggered by the arrival of the Sparrowhawk in my home patch. The first was a post on fellow poet, Juliet Wilson's Crafty Green Poet blog, about her sighting of a fox and a drove of rabbits in the snow (I was willing the fox to feed, but not on the rabbits!). The second was a memory of my time in Philadelphia a year ago last January, when I discovered that there was a version of The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849) in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hicks, apparently, painted 61 versions of the scene, so don't be surprised if this is not the version you know! 

• On the subject of foxes, you might be interested in this. 

Beautiful Birds (34) At Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, USA

Three weeks ago we had a somewhat chilly picnic here on the historic banks of the Delaware at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. There were a few gulls pottering about in the sunshine.

Seeds/Fruits - aka syncarps of achenes

The ground was sprinkled with these seed heads, which I thought might be from the stately Maple Leaf Sycamore/London Plane trees that graced the path along the river bank. A quick Google search seems to confirm that my hunch was correct. You can see the beautiful bark markings on these trees on my previous post on Liberty Island.

We loved this ship!

The gulls were doubtless on the look-out for scraps; but not knowing the local protocol, we resisted any temptation to 'feed the birds'. 

I now know, thanks to Jeremy of Jeremy Inglis Photography, who left a comment on my Liberty Island page, that this is a Ring-billed Gull. Incidentally, researchers at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) have been undertaking a study on banded ('ringed') Ring-billed Gulls, which you can read about here. I think they are still accepting sightings [Postscript: I am posting this in from the comments, so please send your sightings off to the site given here: Martin PM said... 'Sightings are very valuable for us! Thank you for sharing information about our marking program.' Biologist MSc., Research Assistant, Laboratoire de Jean-François Giroux, Université du Québec à Montréal, http://gull.uqam.ca ].

Details of GullFest 2012 can be found here.

This Canada Goose drew up alongside the landing stage. Thanks to John of a DC Birding Blog, I now know the difference between a Canada Goose and a Cackling Goose, the one with the (partial) white collar in John's photo here.

My thanks to Redgannet for pointing out that the Delaware is tidal at this point.