The Food Chain

This young Sparrowhawk has been a regular visitor to our garden. I'd never seen him with any prey, and last time I got a good view of him he was looking a bit scrawny, so I wondered if he was managing to hunt and feed successfully. I was pleased to see him with his breakfast (a sparrow, I think, after all he is a sparrowhawk). Raptors get a really tough time of it; persecuted by gamekeepers, mobbed by crows, dissed by folk who don't think of them as just making a living. How many people get upset when they see a caterpillar being taken by a blue tit? Or even an antelope being devoured by a lion?
As I watched our sparrowhawk finish his breakfast, next door's well fed cat jumped out of the hedge, and sprang at him. Fortunately he escaped. The domestic cat has no place in this food chain.
Busy packing for East Anglia. Tomorrow's blip will hopefully be from Suffolk - we are making a detour before heading to the North Norfolk coast on Friday. Hoping to add at least one bird to my numbered tally over the next 10 days or so.