Hawk Eye: how I came face-to-face with a hawk and its prey

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It was my second day back to work after lockdown, but this fine Tuesday in July 2020 I was working from home, and a blessed relief it was too. Being in the office in a giant warehouse was excruciating. I was composing a carefully worded letter to a customer with a complaint, explaining what our company was prepared to do, as a goodwill gesture of course.

Late morning I noticed a young wood pigeon on the path at the back of the bungalow. It clearly could not fly and could barely walk, but had no obvious injury. I was concerned and wanted to help it but had no idea how. Who do you call to get help for an injured wild animal?

Back indoors I broke off from the complaint letter and got onto the RSPCA website and, finding a telephone number, called it in anticipation of help or at least advice. I didn’t get past the recorded message, which strongly suggested that this number was to report animal cruelty.

I found a few more local websites in south Devon but nothing doing, so I took it upon myself to move the bird from the paving to grass next to my apple trees. Back inside to continue my research – until to my horror I noticed that a hawk had already got to it and decapitated it. It was plucking the bird ready for lunch, then flew off to a tree in my garden to rest for a while, all the time with eyes fixed firmly on its prey.

It struck me that it was likely to be the hawk that earlier stunned the bird and later returned to finish the job. Unpleasant though the whole scene was I decided to grab my tripod and set up my camera with a telephoto lens. I was positioned only about 2-3 metres from the crime scene, and at first the hawk paid more attention to me than to luncheon.

At some point it had clearly decided that I was not interested in stealing his kill, or even sharing it, and ignored me. All the same I made no sudden movements, made a few adjustments to the camera to get shots with various aperture settings, managing to get a few with the bird in focus against a blurred background.

The hawk took a lengthy break of some hours, perched high in a tree before finishing his meal. I was left with a heap of feathers, so the very next day the lawnmower came out for a walk with me. Then there was no evidence that anything untoward had occured.

Now, had I been in the office all day, I would have come home and perhaps noticed a pile of feathers under an apple tree and wondered what that was all about. A bird fight maybe?