What the sparrowhawk had for breakfast

Sparrowhawks, in common with owls and kingfishers, bring up pellets but I had never seen it happen before.  This time he was on top of the hedge, facing away from me.  I could see what was about to happen but because it was gloomy, and I was using a long lens with an aperture of f/6.3, I had set the shutter speed low and didn't have time to adjust it. This picture is a bit blurred but you can see the pellet about to emerge.

After he had gone I retrieved the pellet.  It was about 30mm long and had a few bits of bone sticking out of it.

This is recognisably the head of a tiny femur.  Having searched online I think it is a mammalian femur, probably that of a bank vole.  The femur of a blue tit looks rather different.  Isn't it amazing what you can find these days?

On this side was a line of bones, probably from a wing.

Once the pellet had dried out I teased it apart.  I had expected to find feathers but it consisted mainly of fur and contained several small bones and fragments of bone.

Here are several of the pieces of bone plus two rodent teeth(!).  The line of bones does look as though it is in the remains of a wing but the other bones could be from rodent or bird.

Here are the teeth, 6mm from end to end.  I think they are upper incisors, possibly from a bank vole, but they have slightly different curvatures and so are probably not both from the same animal.

A male sparrowhawk catches mainly small birds but will also take small mammals.  If it catches a bird it plucks its prey, removing a lot of feathers, and then eats almost everything else.  At the site of a bird kill I can find only feathers and I have watched him swallow the legs, including the feet and claws.  This pellet contains mostly fur and bones and the two teeth prove he is taking small mammals.

I have watched this bird staring at a bank vole below the bird feeder but I haven't seen him try to catch it although, come to think of it, I haven't seen the bank vole recently!

I read that sparrowhawks generally produce one pellet a day, usually first thing in the morning at the roost site.  If they feed well early in the day they may produce a second one in the afternoon.  This one came up at 10.30 am so I don't know if it was a delayed first pellet or an early second one.  So far I haven't found any other pellets, nor seen any others come up, but I'll keep looking.