Saturday 17 March 2012

Colour from the season - Sparrow feather black

Last week I found a small circle of feathers in the garden, virtually nothing else left. On close inspection I decided that they could only be the remains of a Sparrow, we have a lot of them living in our garden, they are really noisy and I love them! A few years ago we were sitting in the garden on a summer evening and a Sparrowhawk snatched a Sparrow straight out of the sky just above us. Startling to see, and pretty brutal too.

The measurements of the (tiny) feathers...

large  - 6 cm
medium - 4 cm
small - 2.5 cm







































According to Pete (who knows about these things), it almost certainly was a Sparrowhawk capture not a cat (not seasonal and not that colourful, but I felt bound to record it).

..from my seasonal colour sample notebook.