sparrowhawk

British

/ ˈspærəʊˌhɔːk /

noun

any of several small hawks, esp Accipiter nisus, of Eurasia and N Africa that prey on smaller birds

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

There are two variants of female cuckoos: a gray morph that looks like a sparrowhawk, and a rufous morph.

From Science Daily • Apr. 24, 2024

“We found a similar relationship where we had black sparrowhawk nestlings in the more urbanized part of Cape Town actually having what we considered a more intense immune response,” says Nwaogu.

From National Geographic • Feb. 15, 2024

A study completed in 2004 by Mark Watson showed that the impact of sparrowhawk predation on grey partridges was at its greatest when the game bird population had already been reduced to low levels.

From BBC • Jun. 1, 2012

Wednesday April 27 2011 05:50 GMT Sparrowhawk survives window smash in Scotland A sparrowhawk that smashed through a window is back in the wild after being nursed back to health.

From Children's BBC • Apr. 27, 2011

Point was, though, this sparrowhawk said she’d been told that the sparrows once stole an object of great value to our Abbey.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023