After almost two years in this rural location I have spotted my first fox. As I scanned the field just behind our garden I could see a young amber fox in the long grass. The same week I watched as a sparrowhawk sat atop our small Acer which acts as a feeding station with four bird feeders hanging from it.After a ten second scan it suddenly alighted and swooped low over the neighbour's gardens, twisting in mid air to chase a blue tit who was trying to evade capture. Only the next week we had another visit which I was alerted to by the squawking of hysterical hens. The sparrowhawk had landed on top of the chicken run with the girls just cms away from it. Shakira raced for cover under the hen house and drew blood when she hit her head against the hanging feeder. This is a dangerous thing to happen to a chicken as, once the others have a taste of blood they will keep pecking at the bloodied chicken and can often kill them. Our two seem to be oblivious to that though and no harm came of it but they took a good while to calm down. The sparrowhawk sat on the fence and fixed me with it's beady eye before slowly taking flight. Since then it has been a fairly frequent visitor to the garden. I suppose it was always going to happen, once we had encouraged all the birds to feed in our garden it was bound to attract a hungry hawk.
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