Sparrowhawk clearing July 2022
Although the three young sparrowhawks have fledged, the whole family still visits the area around the nest site, so I do, too. It’s also a lovely spot for a quiet, mindful sit – as Claire Thompson describes in her beautifully written and designed book, The Art of Mindful Birdwatching: Reflections on Freedom and Being (2017).
The Art of Mindful Birdwatching front cover
There’s a great piece of advice about sitting for at least 20 minutes, to give the birds the chance to become accustomed to your presence and start moving around naturally again.
The Art of Mindful Birdwatching – the Sit Spot
This certainly works for the small birds, as I found last week, when the clearing became alive with passerines as I settled down and the sparrowhawks weren’t around (https://wordsanddeeds.co.uk/sitting-with-sparrowhawks-part-3/#more-1013). Today, however, it’s a passerine-free zone – and the begging calls of a young hawk soon signal why. There are actually two sparrowhawks low in the trees near the plucking post, moving around noisily from branch to branch. They’re not easy to see so I have to guess that one is an adult being hassled for food by a juvenile.
Away to my right, a great-spotted woodpecker is giving its harsh, single-note alarm call, accompanied by the continuous ‘tacking’ of two wrens to my left. The sparrowhawks leave, and for a few minutes all is quiet, until the young buzzard pipes up with its deeper, more whistling, two-note begging call. The wrens start tacking again. One of the sparrowhawks returns, still begging, and now I have raptors in front and behind, wrens to the left, and the GSW and a nuthatch to the right, all sounding off – hunters and hunted, predators and prey, a cacophony of sound in this small, sunlit space. The language of the birds is clear in these moments: the young raptor’s high-pitched ‘feed me!’ calls; the adult’s brief ‘dinner is served’ note; the adult buzzards’ cries of ‘intruder!’ that echo through the woods if anyone walks through their territory; the passerines warning of ‘danger’ – although it’s interesting to note that some, like the wren and GSW, continue to sound the alarm, whilst others, such as the tits, fade soundlessly into the background until it’s safe to resume their activities.
I can just make out the young sparrowhawk perched amongst the oak leaves on an almost horizontal branch way across the clearing. It preens for a few minutes, and then stills; its head lowers and it appears to be sleeping. A short phrase comes to me: ‘Oak preening, oak dreaming’ – perhaps it will become a poem? I watch the bird for a few minutes, then wend my way back through the woods, escorted loudly off the premises by the adult buzzards. Yes, it’s obvious what that call means – and if there was another way to go, I would take it, but there isn’t, so I hurry past and in a minute they are quiet again; the raptors return to their reverie and I return to the disharmony of the urban jungle.