I live with a large, malevolent, growling nightmare. It is called 'Cat'. It disgraces itself at the vets & laughs in the face of whaleskin gloves. It is not nice. It must be subdued daily with catnip. There is also an equally pointless but much more delicate creature. It is called 'Kitten'. Even though it no longer is. Also not very nice, though I don't fear it eating my face as much as I do the other. There are also fish. They cause me no issues.
Sh** just missed getting a pic of a visitor to our bird table. Whenever I switch on my digital camera whatever is there flies off even with the double glazing shut. They must hear it through it all. This time it was a Sparrow Hawk in the winter and spring we had a Merlin. Luckily our family of Blackbirds werent around. They can fly now and are getting about a bit. I noticed some feathers around the driveway but put it down to cats or Magpies (dad blackbird chased one off yesterday) But this puts us in another dimension feeding birds further up the foodchain. We have had Buzzards on occassions. They keep the neighbours cats away as they are used to dogs
The Merlin used to fly into my neighbours leylandi climb into my Sycamore and drop behind my wifes plant pots, creep along under our leylandi hedge and come out between her large plant pots to pounce like a cat. Then take off like a jet fighter with lunch. Odd that the Sparrow Hawk is here at the same time and answers as to why we get no birds at lunchtime. Perhaps they are penpals we assumed that the Merlin migrated here for the Winter. Or maybe its the cat going home for a siesta.
Sounds and looks like Boris from All Creatures Great and Small. Around the 11:00 minute mark and also 32:00
The marauding cats which slaughter the birds, rabbits and squirrels in my own yard have been much less an issue since I acquired a simple but effective deterrent.