Starling Down

A thud against the window drew my attention to a commotion in the garden late this afternoon and when I looked out a young male Sparrowhawk was trying to pin down a Starling on the garden path. I think the Sparrowhawk had caused the Starling to veer into the window and had grabbed it on the rebound before taking it down on to the path. The Starling did its best to try and get away and it took the Sparrowhawk a good 2 or 3 minutes to get it fully under control.

I grabbed the camera and took a few photos through the window but it was very overcast and the light levels were really poor. Even at ISO 1600 I could only get a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second so most of the images were a blur from the birds' movements and an element of camera shake. I only shoot JPEGs so that doesn't leave much scope for fancy editing but most couldn't have been salvaged even if they had been taken in RAW format as they were far too blurred and or out of focus. However, there were four images that didn't turn out too bad with a bit of basic tweaking and as long as you don't look at them too closely.

The Starling was one of my colour-ringed birds but I didn't manage to get the ring number before the Sparrowhawk carried it away which is a really unfortunate. I am fairly sure it will have been a first-year bird as most of the Starlings that have been visiting the feeders recently are birds that were ringed as juveniles in the spring and early summer.