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.