Robin snatched

[Graham00]

I was walking around a local park near a river and sat down on a log, this friendly little robin came to my feet as i undid a seed bag, he hardly flinched as i moved around.
I opened up my camera bag to take some close up shots, my 18-70 was perfect actually as he was so close but he flew over to a tree about 50 yds towards a darkened path onto a low branch.
I couldn't see where he'd go to so i walked slowly towards a tree when suddenly at the foot of the tree a sparrowhawk or kestrel took off suddenly, so looked at the foot of the stump and saw many little grey feathers, i was gutted that this happened and somehow felt partly to blame but then put it down to an unfortunate case of nature taking it's coarse

 

[andyjholt]

Yep, had a Siskin taken clean off our niger feeder yesterday, despite it being right up against dense cover. Our local Sparrowhawk makes a run through our garden a couple of times a day this time of year, the feeding station is a serve yourself buffet for him. Having said that he does miss the target a lot of the time, so in theory he'll be mainly taking out birds that are less healthy and slower to react.