anyone knows this bird?

Just out of interest, I'm wondering if anyone knows what kind of bird I might have just seen. I live in the west Tokyo suburbs, and just saw a bird land on one of our washing poles on our terrace- when I looked closer I could see it was a small hawk-like bird, not much bigger than a pigeon- definitely nothing like the size of a tobi.

It was holding another bird with its foot- probably a sparrow. I was going to try to take a photo but it flew away before I got there with the camera. We have a big park nearby so sometimes see some interesting wildlife (saw a tanuki there last month), but it's the first time I've seen that bird.

Anyone know what kind of bird it might have been?

http://www.yachoo.org/Book/Show/146/tumi/
It's size is about 27-30cm, much smaller than tobi (60cm).
The above online field guide says that they mostly feed on small birds in Tokyo and its surrounding area.

Hi, thanks for the link. It was brown with yellow eyes rather than grey with orange eyes so didn't really look like the bird in the first picture in the link, but it did look a lot like some of the birds in the pictures further down the page- maybe there are different varieties?

I didn't know that kind of bird lived around Tokyo, must keep an eye out for them in the future.

Hi Sira,

Your description of the bird matches the young bird �i—c’¹�jof tsumi.
There are total 6 pages of tsumi on the page, and the 2nd one is the young bird - the person who took the photo says that young birds have brown feathers and to his eyes it seems to have yellow eye-ring though he is not sure the colour of the eyes themselves.

Since tsumi is the smallest bird of prey in Japan and others are 50-60 of size, I believe that what you've seen is a young tsumi. :)