Our first casualty of the year

A huge thud on the patio window this morning alerted me to the fact that there was something going on down there. 
I looked out of the bedroom window and could see a pigeon struggling underneath a sparrowhawk, the ultimate killing machine. He's been around since New Year but as yet has not been successful in catching prey in our garden. 
He made a right mess of the lawn plucking it systematically to expose the flesh until my next door neighbour arrived home with a dog on the other side of the fence and disturbed it a little. It then dragged it further across the lawn to the compost area and finally into our 'wildflower area'. 
After taking some shots through the window, I opened the back door and took some more, and could probably have got even closer as it didn't seem phased by my presence at all. I left it to it's breakfast and went out to meet my friends as usual on a Friday morning. 
Two hours later, the sparrowhawk had disappeared, but had left the pigeon, maybe for later. If it's still there tomorrow, that will be a job for my husband! He's so lucky ;)

There's a couple more shots in extras.