Female Sparrowhawk @ Eynsford Kent by Adam Swaine Via Flickr: This fierce bird of prey is a woodland species, but will come into close contact with people when it visits garden bird feeders for an easy meal. Males are blue-grey above with fine orange barring beneath, females are grey-brown and white. Young birds are browner with coarsely barred chests. Sparrowhawks are widespread across Britain and Ireland, with a population that has completely recovered from a deep decline caused by the use of organochlorine pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s.















