YOUR readers J Simpson and G V Bradford (Letters, March 11) claim that I hold sparrowhawks solely to blame for the decline of small garden birds.

My original letter made no such claim, but was merely a response to another reader who queried the decline and stated that sparrowhawks could not be responsible, an opinion masquerading as a fact. As I have witnessed sparrowhawks killing small birds in my garden, I felt bound to correct this claim.

J Simpson states my observations are unscientific. Nevertheless, these incidents did happen, and common sense dictates that this situation is not confined to my garden alone, confirmed by the many complaints to the RSPB.

He also states that in the past garden bird numbers have been kept artificially high by raptor persecution. Since the arrival of sparrowhawks in my garden the numbers are artificially low, zero in fact.

I am aware that in addition to sparrowhawks, many other factors may be responsible for the decline, and both of your correspondents state that cats kill millions of small birds, which implies that this is the reason small birds have now vanished from gardens.

Cats do kills small birds, but this theory is not supported by the following facts.

For many decades small birds visited my garden as did many cats, both feral and domestic. But the small birds only vanished when sparrowhawks appeared, therefore in my garden cats were not responsible for this disaster.

H Brown,

Rillington, Malton.

Updated: 10:22 Wednesday, March 22, 2006