Wildlife artist Robert Fuller takes his daughter on a ‘wildlife safari’ to watch sparrowhawk.

MY two-year-old daughter, Lily, often enjoys ‘wildlife safaris’ with me. Last month I took her on a drive through Millington Pastures for a treat.

In the past we’ve seen barn owls, tawny owls, little owls and short-eared owls, so we both had high expectations. Owls are Lily’s favourite.

But this time we had gone nearly halfway through the pastures and only seen a few kestrels. Lily luckily was more than satisfied with the magnificent herds of highland cattle there.

There were plenty of hares about too, but it was too windy for owls. So we drove on.

“Kestrel” shouted Lily and as I turned to look a young female sparrowhawk flashed over the bonnet of the car. It wasn’t a correct ID, but not bad for a toddler.

The sparrowhawk landed in a hawthorn bush on the daleside. I grabbed my camera, not really expecting to get a shot. But this sparrowhawk was in no rush.

In fact, it actually turned towards me and hopped in closer and into the open. This was extremely unusual as they are normally very flighty.

It bobbed its head around for a while. I thought it must be hunting, but I had looked around and all that I could see was a willow warbler alarm calling behind it. I suspected another bird was hiding from it.

Then the sparrowhawk took me by surprise again by bravely flying even closer to my car. It landed just in front of me, some 12 metres away, and continued looking around. It then spun round in circles before pausing to bob its head. I was sure it was looking for something. It flew into the air only to land again a few metres away.

The hawk ignored me as I rattled off some photos and Lily turned every dial and pressed every button that she could reach on the dashboard.

In spite of hazard lights flashing and windscreen wipers going full pelt, the sparrowhawk continued with its little performance for a further 40 minutes.

I looked at the photographs on the back of my camera to see some dry meat and blood on its beak.

It had obviously had a kill earlier and had been disturbed. Or else it had had enough to eat and had come back to find it.

As I was mulling this over, the sparrowhawk pounced on something. I thought that perhaps it must have found what it was looking for and I watched as it started to pluck its target.

But it was just plucking a tuft of grass kicked up by the cattle. Then she got a few beaks of dry chalky soil, lost interest and moved on with her methodical search.

Just four or five metres away she found what she had spent the best part of an hour looking for – a half eaten dead partridge.

She drove her talons in and mantled her prey with her wings before starting to eat it.

The experience reconfirms that this highly-tuned predator really does hunt by movement and struggled to locate the motionless partridge.

Robert will be holding his Christmas Exhibition of his paintings from November 13-28 at his gallery at Thixendale. It is open everyday, 11am-4.30pm