Not so hard to swallow

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Birdwatchers rushed excitedly to see a swallow that hasn't been seen in Britain for 20 years - then got a nasty surprise when eaten by a hawk in front of their eyes.

The twitchers had been watching the red-rumped swallow for 20 minutes when it stopped to rest on a TV aerial.

It was then that the sparrowhawk swooped, near Montrose in Scotland.

Group member Mike Sawyer said: 'We were horrified. We had just called other birdwatchers to tell them the news, and then had to call back to say it had been eaten.' 

The red-rumped swallow isn't normally found any further north than Greece.

A RSPB spokesman added: 'Sadly, it is just one of those things.' (source)

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