One thing I love about living in Ireland is how everything turns green almost overnight. One day trees look bare and wet and the next day they are covered in greenest new leaves that scream "Summer!". Everything changes so suddenly that it's hard to recognise the woods we've roamed in search of nests.

A few weeks ago I wrote that we have found three sparrowhawk nesting sites. We called them the Garden, Sorrel Woods, and Mossy Woods. Finding actual nests is really exciting. All those hours of searching for signs and clues on the ground have paid off and this is a big landmark in our Wild Take adventure.

This means that I can now stop focusing on the feathers under my feet and put all my attention towards the tree tops - towards where sparrowhawks nest. So a few days ago we revisited the Sorrel Woods hoping to see sparrowhawks coming and leaving the nest.

Sorrel Woods is one I like the most because it's just gorgeous. The nicely spaced trees allow sunlight to trickle down to illuminate velvety leaves of wood sorrel that covers the ground. This woodland is so clean, and it feels enchanted and just lovely.

The other reason I like this spot is because we came across is randomly - by following a musket who swiftly flew in front of our bicycles as we were on our way elsewhere. It felt almost as if this little male lead us towards this place and the nest.

We brought our bivvy bags, oatcakes, and binoculars in preparation for a long stakeout. We found a tree to rest against with a good view of the nest and waited. The midges were horrific. They are vicious little flies that won't leave you in peace until you move location.

This is Ed waiting patiently but what you can't see on this photo is that he is being eaten alive by midges.

After a few moments of looking through my binoculars and fidgeting as more and more tiny jaws tucked into my thigh I could no longer stand the midges and decided to walk around to see what I can find. At one point I directed my binoculars upwards towards the canopy. Then I stopped and gasped - there was another nest! How did we miss it last time? I don't know. But it was a solid built thing about 15 meters up high. It looked new too.

Here is a photo I took through my binoculars.

Almost immediately I noticed that something was sticking out form the nest. It was a tail - a sparrowhawk was right there in the nest!

On this photograph Ed took through binoculars you will see a roundish clump of twigs and just to the right from the middle of this clump there is an upright oval/rectangular shape - this is the tail.

The photographs do not do justice but the tail had barring and it was unmistakably her sitting in the nest. Whether she was on eggs of not we couldn't tell. She sat very still for a long time and then suddenly she called in a very faint voice. She shifted, got up and starred directly at us. It's amazing to be starring in the eyes of such a wild thing. But she didn't fly away maybe because she was incubating eggs or maybe because she was heavy and was about to lay. Once she called, her partner came out of nowhere and darted past us in panic making it clear we were intruding on their privacy. It was time to leave them in peace.

We will return sometime in the next few weeks to check on this nest discretely. Meanwhile here are some treasures we found in the Mossy Woods on the same day.

A molted feather of a sparrowhawk. It looked very healthy with no hunger marks or signs of damage.