A bird of prey in the back garden

One night last week Laura spotted what we think was a Sparrow Hawk, (below) sitting on a bench in one of the back gardens behind our flat.

Bit rare to find a bird of prey in the centre of Edinburgh. It's a bit like seeing a Bald Eagle in downtown Manhattan. Okay, maybe not quite, but it's pretty unusual.

It sat there for ages and we thought it might be injured, but eventually it flew away. No doubt to, uh, kill a sparrow.

We think it must have been a female because it had brown feathers.

We could see it a lot more clearly through our binoculars, but unfortunately my camera doesn't zoom in that close with a clear picture. Damn...I should have used our camcorder! It has a 32 X Zoom lens ! Oh well.