Sparrowhawks have recovered well following pesticide bans and now inhabit towns and cities across Britain. Their welfare and ecological role in urban environments raises interesting questions about predator-prey dynamics and garden bird feeding.
Sparrowhawk welfare in urban environments is generally good - they have reliable prey supplies and relatively few natural threats. Window strikes injure and kill sparrowhawks attempting to pursue prey through or past glass, and some injured birds require wildlife rehabilitation. The welfare question most often raised by garden bird enthusiasts is the opposite direction: does garden feeding concentrate songbirds and make them more vulnerable to sparrowhawk predation? The evidence suggests that sparrowhawks follow prey concentrations but do not reduce songbird populations at landscape scale - garden birds not killed by sparrowhawks face other mortality sources. Removing feeders does not eliminate sparrowhawk predation; it simply disperses it.