UKC

About an hour ago I opened the fire exit to my work (a small community centre in Wigan) and disturbed a female sparrowhawk that had just caught a wood pigeon.  She flew off.  So I came back into the building and sat patiently.  Well, 40 minutes later she arrived back to finish her meal.  She is an absolute stunning bird of prey, big even for a female.  Immaculate plumage.  And a I also saw two tawny owls at their roost this morning, and saw usual kestrel and buzzard.  Great way to end my working day !!

She dragged the pigeon onto a small log, had her fill and just flown off.  Utterly brilliant !!

Nature in the raw, eh?

Isn't it?  We have resident sparrowhawks who snack on our healthy sparrow population (which is fair enough, it pains me when they take other things, especially on one occasion, a young spotted woodpecker).  

Couple of weeks ago on a typically cold, grey and wet Tuesday, I was having a quick breather outside Widnes urgent care centre when my eyes were drawn to a bloody great seagull, perched on top of a white transit van, eating a dead pigeon. 

Bit too much 'nature in the raw' for my liking, but entirely in keeping with Widnes's general ambience.

If woodpeckers were as common as sparrows would you be less pained? Or is it the appearance  of the woodpecker which makes its death more upsetting to you?

This is not meant as a criticism of your reaction : it's out of a genuine interest in the notion of what constitutes a "preferred species" mentioned in the Rat in the Garden thread.

Might be an OCD thing, and if it was called a Woodpeckerhawk he might be perfectly ok with it?

A bit of both.  I do like sparrows, but we have a healthy population.  We see few woodpeckers, so to see a locally raised family of them visit our feeders was great - and finding the remains of one of the youngsters was disappointing.  We don't have many wood pigeons, and as result our rather more attractive collared doves are often victims too, which seems a shame.    

So yes, some sentimental bias but mostly I'd just prefer the sparrowhawks had commoner tastes.  

Yes, I have a problem with flycatchers eating butterflies and oyster catchers eating ragworms too.

It’s an underdog thing, the rarer species will always garner more fondness because their rarity in itself makes us feel like their life must be a struggle. 
 

Are you sure it was a sparrowhawk ... or maybe that it had a pigeon ?? Size match is too close ! I mean there is a reason the raptor is named as a *sparrow* hawk !!

A female sparrowhawk is capable of killing pigeons and its far from unknown. A male sparrowhawk would find itself out of its weight class.

Thatdoesn't seem to apply to the UK black rat population.

Yes, that's an interesting one.  I don't have any problem with rats, in the right places, and would prefer the smaller, less invasive black rat.  They now seem to be restricted to offshore islands - they were famously abundant on the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides, but were exterminated there by the RSPB.

I thought black rats used to be regarded a bit like red squirrels - the cuter native species being driven out by the more aggressive recent arrival  They get a page on the People's Trust for Endangered Wildlife*, for instance.  Interestingly, the RSPB carefully 'other' them as as 'non-native', although they've been here since at least Roman times (so much longer than rabbits).   

* I have my doubts about them as an impartial source, though.  They seem to think that it was gerbils that spread the Black Death but I doubt they were responsible for the Great Plague in 1665, unless our pet keeping habits were rather different from how I imagine 17th Century London.

I love seeing woodpeckers in my garden too. But to add a bit of balance ………...

I watched a woodpecker taking live blue tit chicks from one of our nest boxes a few years ago. He visited regularly to enlarge the hole until his head was big enough to fit inside. He then took each one in turn (no doubt to feed his own chicks) until the nest was empty. It was harrowing to watch but I was helpless to intervene. I couldn't modify the box with live young inside and couldn't be there to monitor it constantly.

I knew that woodpeckers did this, but had never had a problem in the past. I immediately went out and bought a metal plate for every nest box.

Indeed.  One took a pigeon in our back garden a couple of years back.  It took her at least half an hour to consume her prey, during which time she appeared pretty unconcerned about our (successful) attempts to photograph and video her.  I still have one photo in which she is staring straight at the camera with a look that seems to say: "Hang around much longer, matey, and you'll be next".  Pretty much all that was left when she finally flew away - her crop visibly bulging - was the breastbone and the wings.