Surprise!

So, as I think I mentioned, when I was out on Friday, waiting for owls to turn up, I kept myself amused by photographing some of the other birds of prey in evidence.  It was a good distraction from the bitter cold.  The vast majority of the birds were kestrels, I think I counted at least 4 different birds at one stage.  

But this bird of prey is clearly not a kestrel.  It was a bit too far away for a decent shot, so it was only as I was double checking the memory card today (prior to reformatting it), that I remembered that I was going to have another a look at it.  At the time I'd thought that it might be a large sparrow hawk, but looking at it again today on screen I think that it's probably a Goshawk. It can be problematic to distinguish between the two species, so I'm not 100% certain, but I think that the bulk of the bird, combined with the fuller hindwing is strongly suggestive of Goshawk.  Certainly when I look at my nice new copy of Britain's Birds (Hume, Still, Swash, Harrop and Tipling) (thank you Incredibish and Janet), it seems supportive of the Goshawk ID.