People have used the Sparrowhawk for falconry (hunting using a bird of prey) for more than 500 years. It is difficult to train but brave. The sparrowhawk features in some old German myths. It is mentioned in a play by William Shakespeare and a poem by Ted Hughes.
The sparrowhawk is a small bird of prey with short, broad wings and a long tail. These adaptations help it to fly between trees. Females can be up to 25% larger than males and can be twice as heavy. When females are larger than males, it is called "reverse sexual dimorphism". It is unusual in higher vertebrates but typical in birds of prey.
The adult male is long from beak to tail, with a wingspan of . He weighs . The male has a slate-grey back and wings (sometimes more blue). His chest and belly have thin red stripes but they can look orange from a distance. His eyes are orange-yellow or orange-red.
The female is much larger – long, with a wingspan of . She weighs . The female has dark brown or grey-brown back and wings, and brown stripes on her chest and belly. Her eyes are bright yellow to orange.
Young sparrowhawks have a brown back and wings, with rust-coloured edges to the feathers. They have bigger brown stripes and spots on their chest and belly, and pale yellow eyes.
The Sparrowhawk's pale underparts and darker back and wings are an example of countershading. This colouration counteracts the effect of light coming from above, and helps to make the bird less visible. In fact, countershading is seen in most animals, including the Peregrine Falcon, the Merlin and other "Accipiters". The Sparrowhawk's stripes are typical of markings on birds of prey which live in woodland.
Sparrowhawks fly in a pattern described as "flap-flap-glide". The glide means that the flight has an up-and-down pattern. In Great Britain, Sparrowhawks living further north have longer wings than birds in the south. The sparrowhawk has a small, hooked beak. It is used for removing the feathers of its prey. The sparrowhawk's long legs and toes help it to catch and eat birds. Its middle toe is very long and is used to grab things.
Most sparrowhawks live for about four years. 34% of young birds survive to be one year old. 69% of adults survive from one year to the next. The oldest known wild sparrowhawk lived for more than 20 years.
Young sparrowhawks (less than one year old) weigh less than adults. They are especially light in the two months after leaving the nest. There is probably a high death rate at this time, particularly for males. This may be because the smaller males catch smaller food. They cannot catch some of the bigger prey that females can. This means they need to eat more often. A female sparrowhawk of average weight can survive for seven days without eating. A male can survive only four days.
The sparrowhawk is part of the family Accipitridae and the genus "Accipiter". Some English people used to call the sparrowhawk the blue hawk because of the male's colour. Other old names include spar hawk, spur hawk and stone falcon.
The Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus was the first person to describe the sparrowhawk. He called it "Falco nisus" in 1758. The French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson moved it into the "Accipiter" genus in 1760.
The current scientific name comes from the Latin words "accipiter" (hawk) and "nisus" (the sparrowhawk).
The sparrowhawk forms a superspecies with the rufous-chested sparrowhawk of eastern and southern Africa, and possibly the Madagascar sparrowhawk. Eurasian sparrowhawks look slightly different in different parts of their range. Birds in the eastern part of the range are larger and paler. Six subspecies of sparrowhawk are generally recognised:
X86
x86 is a term used to describe a CPU instruction set compatible with the Intel 8086 and its successors, including the Pentium and others made by Intel and other companies. This is the CPU architecture used in most desktop and laptop computers. Many 21st century workstations and servers also use x86 processors. In 1985, the original 16 bit x86 architecture was extended to 32 bits with the introduction of the i386 processor. It was extended again to 64 bits in 2003 with the introduction of the AMD Opteron processor.
Intel adopted the 64-bit computing bit architecture in 2004 with the later versions of the Prescott Pentium 4. The different versions are backward-compatible, meaning that a 32-bit x86 CPU can run a 32-bit or 16-bit operating system, and a 64-bit x86 CPU can run a 16, 32, or 64-bit operating system. All x86 CPUs (with the rare exception of some Intel CPUs used in embedded systems) start in 16-bit real mode. A modern operating system (or sometimes the bootloader) switches the CPU into 32-bit protected mode or 64-bit long mode before booting the kernel.
Operating systems in magenta run only on x86 processors. Operating systems in blue originated on x86 but have since been made for other processors as well. Operating systems in orange did not originate on x86 and were ported to x86.
Carey Means
Carey Means is an American voice actor. He is best known for voicing Frylock on the Adult Swim program "Aqua Teen Hunger Force".
The Brak Show
The Brak Show is a Adult Swim program starring Brak who was on several old Space Ghost cartoons. The show is also about Brak's mom and dad, his friends Zorak and Clarence, his brother Sisto, and his neighbor Thundercleese. At first the show had a plot, but later on became just crazy like it's sister show Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Andy Merill and George Lowe appear in all episodes.<br>C. Martin Croker was absent for two episodes.<br>Carey Means was absent for ten episodes.
Belinda (book)
Belinda is an 1801 novel by the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It was first published in three volumes by Joseph Johnson of London in 1801, and was later printed again by Pandora Press in 1986. The book was Edgeworth's second published. The book was noted for showing interracial marriage.
Lady Delacour is a "bel esprit" (woman of wit), who Belinda at first thinks “the most agreeable—no, that is too feeble an expression—the most fascinating person she had ever beheld (known).” Later, however, after Belinda hears about her sad life, she feels sorry for her. Belinda is very kind to Lady Delacour, who begins to like her. Through Belinda's gentleness, Lady Delacour begins to change. She becomes more caring for her husband and daughter Helena. However, Lady Delacour's sudden untrue jealousy towards Belinda and makes her move to the Percivals' house, where Helena is staying at. Later, Lady Delacour finds out that she was completely wrong and had misunderstood Belinda's good intentions. She becomes very ill, and begs for Belinda to forgiver her and come back. Belinda, accepting her apology, comes, and now Lady Delacour does everything Belinda advises her to do, and makes up with her husband, revealing to him how she is ill, that she had been hiding from everybody except herself and Belinda and her maid. Lord Delacour feels worried for her when he hears this. She takes a surgery, and is told that she is actually not ill at all. The bad doctor she had been going to had given her the wrong medicines, and therefore made her sick. Joyfully, she decides to be a good wife, a sweet friend, and a kind mother. She ends the book by saying, while laughing, “Now, Lady Delacour, to show that she is reformed, comes forward to address the audience with a moral—a moral!—yes,
Our tale contains a moral, and no doubt,
You all have wit enough to find it out.”
Her strong character and the very important part she plays in the book make some people think the title should be her name instead of Belinda's.