Pandemonium sweeps across the yard as birds flee in all directions.
A Chipping Sparrow delays a few seconds too long before taking flight and is caught a couple of feet above the feeder by a small blue-backed hawk. The two birds tumble to the ground where the sparrow is quickly killed and eagerly devoured by this villain of the forest. When people see a Sharp-shinned Hawk taking a meal at the bird feeder their sympathies are almost always with the prey, not the predator. The answer, easy to give but difficult to accept, is nothing. Human sympathies do not fit into the natural world.