Quite the drama outside!

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As I’ve written about before, I spend a lot of time watching the birds, and also monitoring them for the British Trust for Ornithology’s garden birds project. So basically I’m constantly listening, and glancing out of the window, to keep abreast of who is out there! I have a bird feeder outside the window near my desk, so when I’m working I can still keep an eye on the local robins, bluetits, greattits, coaltits, dunnocks and woodpeckers that regularly call in, plus a few more occasional visitors. Yesterday there was a lot of commotion because a pair of sparrowhawks have moved into the area and every now and then the female would come swooping through the apple trees hoping to grab a distracted small bird like a blue tit. I didn’t see her catch one, but the interesting things was that after a while, this activity was noticed by a jay (which is a bird of the crow family and about the same size as the sparrowhawk) and it started to harass the hawk. Then a second jay joined in, and then a third – this was unusual because I rarely see more than one jay at a time. Each time the hawk came around, the jays would go after her and basically chase her off. Eventually she got fed up of this and went elsewhere. I was a bit surprised by all this because I didn’t think a sparrowhawk would be a threat to a jay as they are a similar size, but apparently they are – having investigated a bit further I have found videos online of sparrowhawks killing jays. So presumably the jays thought there was safety in numbers and decided to gang up! The image is of a female sparrowhawk from birdfact.com All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2026.