There's.a peregrine falcon in my garden...

[mamaduckbone]

....casually eating a pigeon on the patio.

Well, I think that's what it is. If I leave it long enough do you think it will finish it off, or is there going to be a bloody mess to clear up in the morning?

It's an amazing sight to be fair.

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Fox might take anything left, they have a good sense of smell but I reckon the falcon will take it

Check it is a PF - could be a sparrow hawk. They raid my privet for pigeons and sparrows fairly regularly, like it’s a drive-thru McDonalds. Always exciting to see though.

Collared dove looks like its still alive.

You'll just see a few feathers floating around in the morning, if anything.

They're wonderful birds - you're very lucky (even though the Dove clearly wasn't).

I think it is a sparrowhawk actually, although we do have falcons in our church tower.
The pigeon / dove is definitely not still alive at this point.

Judging by what the peregrines leave around the abbey, you’ll find a head, legs, wings and feathers left behind. Apparently they strip their prey then take it elsewhere to eat it

Oh no, a collared dove! They are such lovely little gentle birds. My two (who look through my kitchen window from my balcony if the bird feeder needs topping up and will fly down from nearby trees if they hear me calling them down to eat) have managed so far to survive the local sparrowhawk but I sometimes go down to the garden to piles of feathers from other birds.

I was already to love your post until I actually read it . Poor dove but yes I know they have to eat.

We've had the same thing in our garden. Impressive to see.
When a similar pic was posted on local fb group the suggestions for the bird of prey were sparrowhawk or goshawk.

A sparrowhawk I think. We have had a couple of similar deaths in our garden. I love it, TBH. The dove's loss is the sparrowhawk's gain!

This happened to my sister. Peregrine ate most of the chest and organs but left the head, wings, feet and a few tail feathers.

I had a crow eating a pigeon in my bird bath last month. I saw it whilst looking out of my bedroom window and filmed it as I'd never seen anything like it before. Told my Dad and he said it happens a lot (brought up on a farm)

Definitely a Sparrow Hawk.

Sparrowhawk. We had one eat a blackbird and it left NOTHING. It was sad though, he ate the female and the male sat in their nest screeching and calling the entire time it was happening 😢

Does anyone else remember watching a school tv programme back in the 80s about a gang stealing peregrine falcon eggs?

Well despite getting both birds wrong initially (almost certainly a sparrow hawk and a collared dove) it was an impressive sight.

There's now nothing left except feathers and a very small carcass that it has helpfully left in a bucket. I couldn't stomach watching it actually ripping the poor bird to pieces but the sparrow hawk was beautiful. Ds videoed a good bit of it.

Never seen anything like it before and now hoping my garden doesn't become a regular sparrowhawk buffet.

That’s a Sparrow Hawk. We had one this morning sitting on our guttering, waiting for the housemartins who have nested under the soffits.

For a while an osprey used to sit on a pole outside my mum’s kitchen eating its breakfast. Every time I walked her dog I’d have to swerve all the little discarded bits of (usually) fish and one day there was a pigeon skeleton stripped bare except for both fully feathered wings.

Poor collared dove.

It’s probably a sparrowhawk.

100% a sparrowhawk.

It’s sad for the dove but its nature. They’re apex predators, and a good sign - it takes many smaller birds to feed one sparrowhawk, so their survival and presence indicates hope for the ecosystem - big predators always die out first as the food pyramid can’t sustain them if it wobbles (hence why tigers and polar bears are more endangered than seals and deer). But to have the beautiful birds of prey, we have to cope with them predating other birds in our gardens. Nature red in tooth and claw.

The first time this happened to me I was just left with a collection of feathers and no other evidence at all and I was SO confused . Beautiful birds both of them but everyone has to eat. I've had a juvenile peregrine before and it had the most amazing stripy tail.

Yes! At school. ‘Sky Hunter’ I think. There was an interlude with tips on reading and spelling.

I remember watching this at school too .. no idea why, wasn’t educational, maybe just gave the teacher time to do some marking 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

I remember watching it too. I think it came with a companion book and we had to do comprehension exercises etc.