Accipiter nisus

I’m sitting in my office, looking out across the narrow road where I live, when I notice a flicker of movement behind my neighbour’s chimney pots. These aren’t the grand, proud stacks you see on some of the older houses nearby. Even now, scanning up and down the street, they seem rather insignificant as chimney pots go. It’s a semi-detached house, and the pots lean at odd angles, giving the impression of crooked teeth that a good dentist could probably straighten with an eye-wateringly expensive brace.

And there, tucked in behind them and staring straight back at me, is a sparrowhawk. (not in the pic)

It’s not the first time I’ve seen one on the road, but it is the first time I’ve caught it looking in my direction. Perched up there like a sailor in a crow’s nest, it instantly earns a name in my mind: my hawk. But what was it watching?

The answer came in a flash. One moment it was there, the next it was gone — a blur across the road and straight into my back garden. Down it went to harass the birds that have been gathering in these freezing conditions, drawn in by the feeders and the seed I’d scattered across the grass. The garden erupted in chaos for a while. I don’t think the hawk was successful, but the whole episode left me thinking about the morality of feeding the birds… bear with me.

I moved in here back in April. My garden backs onto an allotment — far noisier than you might imagine — with neighbouring gardens on either side. One neighbour has bird feeders, the other doesn’t. One garden is left to nature, the other is so pristine it looks like Edward Scissorhands might live there. It’s a real patchwork of habitats, and yet this hawk was using my neighbour’s chimney pots to actively hunt in my garden — the garden I’d effectively filled with birds by providing an easy supply of seed and suet.

So does that mean I’m creating a killing field?

Had the hawk always done this? Animals, after all, are opportunists — when it comes to food, nesting sites, or anything that makes life a little easier, they take what they can. Who can blame them? A hawk using a chimney pot to hunt birds that are themselves taking advantage of an easy meal — does that cancel itself out?

Do I carry on feeding the birds, encouraging them into my accidental killing field while also denying the hawk an easy catch? Or do I stop feeding altogether, denying the hawk a potential meal but also denying the birds the boost that could help them through winter and into a better breeding season?

In the end, I realise the discomfort comes from my need to interfere, to tidy up a system that has never asked for my permission. The hawk is not immoral, and neither are the birds — only I am burdened with the idea that I must somehow manage the outcome. Perhaps the most honest role I can play is not judge, nor saviour, but witness.

So I’ll keep the feeders topped up, the garden open, and my assumptions in check. Life will balance itself in ways I don’t fully understand and never will. And as I sit at my desk, watching feathers scatter and settle again, I’m reminded that nature doesn’t perform for my comfort — it simply carries on, indifferent to my doubts, yet richer for my attention.