Kaylin Hamilton Photography

Hey! I’m Kaylin, a photographer and artist from Scotland. I love photographing nature and wildlife, natural and built environments, and everything else in-between!

#85 Sparrowhawk

Hey folks,

I hope you’re not getting sick of the bird photography, because today I’ve got another local feathered resident, the sparrowhawk.

Judging by the colours, this is either a female or a juvenile bird. It was attempting a rather ill-considered go at grabbing a blackbird, which is not that much smaller than it, so I think it was either a juvenile still learning how and what to hunt, or possibly just a little bit desperate. As the name suggests, they usually hunt sparrows.


Sparrowhawk hanging out on my roof

I first saw one of these birds at my back door when I lived in a very urban part of Glasgow – it’s not uncommon to see them nesting on high rise flats in UK cities. This little one was at the back door of my current flat, which is a lot more rural, showing the variety of habitats they will live in.

Grim as it is, the best way to attract sparrowhawks is… to feed the local sparrow well. I try not to think about that too much when I’m filling up the bird feeder in my garden 😬

Thanks for visiting,

Kaylin x

5 responses

  1. I thought I had a Sparrowhawk in my garden last week. It turned out to be a Brown Goshawk.
    PS I am in Australia 🙂

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    1. That’s pretty cool! We get Goshawks here but they’re pretty rare, they were almost extinct at one point but have made a bit of a comeback.

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