Looking out the back window of our house, I witnessed the taking of a wood pigeon by a bird of prey. Through the lens of my view scope, I noticed the feather colour had a greyish hue, the bird looked much larger than the pigeon and its eyes were surrounded by a bright orangey/yellow ring. Could it have been a peregrine or a buzzard?
Vincent Hyland, Rathcoffey, Co. Kildare
It was a male peregrine.
We were awakened at 7 a.m. by the clamour of jackdaws, magpies and grey crows mobbing a bird of prey who had a struggling jackdaw on the lawn. After a few minutes, when the jackdaw was dead, it was taken with some difficulty under a low-hanging Lawsonia branch, and the mobbing stopped. There over the following three and a half hours most of it was eaten, and the bird flew off with the remainder. The bird had a powerful build, was about 40cm, had a brown back with white blotches, long, brown, rounded, barred tail, brown head with white stripes back from the eyes, and buff, barred underparts.
M.J. Murphy, Rathgar, Dublin, 14.
It was a female sparrowhawk, and a jackdaw was certainly an ambitious choice of prey for a bird that usually takes smaller prey. Wood pigeon, where available is, however, a large part of a sparrowhawk's diet and a jackdaw is smaller. While walking my dog down the fields yesterday I saw a bird of prey about the size of a crow fly out of a hedge and onward for about 100 yards before going back in again. It did this The behaviour and size of this bird suggests a female sparrowhawk, but her underparts are striped brown on a pale underground. However the impression from a distance is of a uniform brown underside.
I work under the railway arches in Trinity College Dublin and was surprised to see a flash of blue go past my window on the morning of March 18th, the kind of flash you normally see along river banks. True enough, there was a kingfisher sitting on a wire, first along the wall and then on the overhead Dart cables.
Dara Fitzpatrick, Kilmainham, Dublin 8
Kingfishers tend to migrate locally towards coastal areas in winter. The bird in question may have been following the railway line which provides plenty of places to perch on its way to the coast.
Edited by Michael Viney, who welcomes obsevations sent to him at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. email: viney@anu.ie. Observations sent by email should be accompanied by postal address as location is sometimes important to identification or behaviour.