Tag: Sparrowhawk

Snow White Feathers

Basketwork box, drawn at my mum's this afternoon.

IT SEEMS that white feathers didn’t camouflage this bird against the snow. My guess is that it was a Fantail Pigeon, killed by a Sparrowhawk, but as the feathers are near the back door at my mum’s some incident involving the bird hitting the window isn’t impossible.

Whatever it was, it happened on Sunday around 11 a.m.. I was painting at the school but when Barbara called on my mum she commented on the small area of snow that my mum had cleared by the back door but when she left an hour or so later small white feathers – like a fresh sprinkling of oversized snowflakes – had appeared. It wasn’t until today, when most of the snow had melted that we saw just how many feathers there were and that there were larger feathers amongst them.

Time for some Crime Scene Investigation:

Under the microscope this feather, which I think is a right secondary or possibly a tail feather, shows the tell-tale marks of having been plucked by a Sparrowhawk. It has twisted its beak around the base of the quill as it pulled out the feather.

Gull Feather CSI

I PICKED up this feather, a primary from the gull’s right wing,  on the pavement in front of the Bingley Arms, an old pub that stands on a narrow strip of land between the river and the canal at Horbury Bridge. Having a feather as a temporary bookmark in my sketchbook proved handy when I found myself sitting in a waiting room with nothing else available to draw.

The underside is a shade lighter. There’s a scallop-shaped indentation at the tip of the feather. Was this the result of the gull preening; tugging out an old feather that was past its best?

Under the microscope, half way down the unfeathered end of quill, you can see this scratch. Is the ‘V’-shaped impression on the underside of the quill an impression left by gull’s bill when it was preening?

Scratches like these around the base of a feather can be a sign that a sparrowhawk has gripped and twisted with its beak as it plucks feathers from it’s prey. Could this be evidence that the gull was taken by a sparrowhawk?

Smoking Shelter

A few yards from my suspected avian crime scene, down the side of the Bingley Arms, there’s a smoking shelter, one of the most picturesque I’ve seen, with petunias, geraniums and garden mint in pots and runner beans and sweet peas growing up the trellis.

If I was visiting a pub on a summer’s day, I’d find this more tempting than sitting in the public bar. But I’m still not tempted to take up smoking.