My backyard has a lot of bird activity. And one bird we see fairly often is the Sharp Shinned Hawk. Several of them actually.  They are here for one thing…a meal.  Sharp-shinned and the larger Coopers Hawk, are part of the accipiter family.  These are birds of the woods and forests and they dine on small birds mostly.  A juvenile sharpy caught a sparrow today in the bush outside my office window.   You feel kind of bad for the small bird, but this is why nature put hawks out there…they must eat and survive too.