19th
January, 2000
High pressure
systems have brought some spells of very fine and settled
weather to Ackworth during the past week or two and one of these is with us at
the moment. The days may be sunny and, at times, quite
warm but the nights have been relatively cold, resulting
in ground frosts.
On the morning of
Sunday, 16th, the grounds were covered in a white layer
of frost. As I walked towards the cricket field, passing
between the tennis courts, I came across a patch of
feathers on the ground. Around the feathers there were
footprints in the frost, which appeared to be those of a
fox. The feathers were off-white and had probably
belonged to a domestic pigeon. A close examination of the larger
feathers revealed that they had not been torn from the
bird but the quills had been snipped off quite neatly
near the base. The way that the feathers had been cut
makes me think that the pigeon had been the victim of a
female sparrowhawk. Male sparrowhawks do hunt in the
grounds but are much lighter than the females and would
not normally tackle a pigeon. It seems likely that the
fox had either chased the hawk away and stolen the meal
or had been sniffing around the feathers some time after
the hawk had finished eating.
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