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SPARROWHAWK
Accipiter nisus
Sparrowhawk © Tommy Holden
 

• Population
  changes

• Productivity
  trends

• Additional
  information
Conservation listings
Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe)
UK: green
Long-term trend
England: rapid increase
UK population size
40,100 pairs in 2000 (1988–91 Atlas estimate updated using CBC/BBS trend: BiE04, APEP06)
Status summary
Sparrowhawks increased strongly in the UK as the population recovered from the crash caused by organochlorine pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s (Newton 1986). The species became common enough on CBC plots for annual monitoring in the early 1970s, and many former haunts especially in the Midlands and east of England were reoccupied between the two atlas periods (Gibbons et al. 1993). Improving breeding performance is likely to have contributed to this remarkable period of success: failure rates at the egg stage (c.44 days from laying the first egg) fell markedly from high initial values, and brood sizes increased throughout. The population has stabilised since the mid 1990s and, possibly through the effects of interspecific competition, average brood size has begun to drop again.
 

Population changes
CBC/BBS England graph
 
BBS acknowledgement
 
BBS UK graph
BBS England graph
 

Productivity trends
 
Clutch size graph
Brood size graph
Egg nest failure graph
Chick nest failure graph
Laying date graph

 

 

Insufficient data on CES
available for this species
 

Additional information
BTO blue divider
 

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This report should be cited as:
Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Crick, H.Q.P., Noble, D.G., Balmer, D.E., Barimore, C., Coombes, R.H.,
Downie, I.S., Freeman, S.N., Joys, A.C., Leech, D.I., Raven, M.J., Robinson, R.A. & Thewlis, R.M. (2007)
Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2007.
BTO Research Report No. 487. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends)

Pages maintained by Susan Waghorn and Iain Downie: Last updated 7 November, 2008