A startling picture to be sure, good Doctor. Although I’ve seen many hawks and some eagles in our area, I’ve not spotted them preying on the faery folk. Bull snakes and the larger garter snakes, though, often lay in wait in our gardens for the unwary creatures. I chase the snakes off when I find them, but their shed skins wrapped around the base of the rose bushes show that they frequent the area often.

I tend to disagree with Mortonlowe’s theory as well. That faery predation happens at all is a sign that the faery are part of the natural ecosystem. Usually when a foreign organism is introduced, it tends to disrupt the ecosystem something fierce. Unless there is evidence of this disruption, your belief in natural evolution would be valid.

Accepting ‘natural’ as relative when faery is involved.

Oh, I must say, that capture is so,.. graphic. You must have a stronger stomach than I, Doctor. I feel I must get some air.

Do not dispose of Mortonlowe’s rather elegant theorum. I find that the most truthful theories are the simplist, and Mortonlowe’s simplicity and robustness make it quite likely to shape future thought on the nature of life in this world.

Min. Campbell: faery predation is only the utilization of resource. Animals do not think ‘this is a mouse and therefore food, and this is a fairy and therefore not’. Indeed, the instinctive nature of animals is what separates them from us. Find the owner of a cat or dog and ask them if they will chase after a trailing string. Certainly it looks and smells nothing like food for either, yet their hunting instinct is so strong they will not pass this by.
Likewise, the hawks in the park are simply seizing upon an animal of about the right size for prey. Fairy meat is edible, though depending on specie, perhaps not palatable. Though I did once have a servant who made a kelpie bouillabaisse that was quite pleasant on a rainy fall evening.
As for fairy predation, I have no personal exploits to report. Though I recently came across a passage in Brownestein’s “Journey in The Deeps” that mentions Angler Whisps feeding off the bats in the caverns. A bit in the reverse of what you were asking for, however.

Dr. Roundbottom, your startling photonic capture puts me in mind of the unusual ‘faerie predation’ that I recently witnessed in the environs of Houthinghamshirewood County.

Hereabout the landscape is mostly comprised of rolling green hillsides covered with wild flowers and dotted with small, but dense, wooded groves. The population here is quite modest. The land is not good for farming, as it is rocky and crisscrossed with underground caverns which make the ground unstable. Thus we are not plagued with the great, steaming, mobile factories that crawl about the surrounding counties. It is an exceedingly pleasant countryside, and folks hereabout love nothing more than to take long walks, often with the purpose of faerie-spotting, which is something of a local obsession.

Yet there is one area that people do not go. Hollowtop Hill, the highest hill in the county. I have heard many strange stories of that Hill, but last year I resolved to stroll there myself to disprove those superstitious tales. It is a steep hill, so I was quite out of breath by the time I reached the summit. At first I thought it was no different than any other hill, yet after a few minutes I began to perceive a certain unexplainable oddness. At first I could not pinpoint the cause of my unease, but eventually I realized that it was weirdly silent on the hill. There were no sounds at all, other than the gentle whisper of the breeze. No chirping crickets, or twittering birds lilted through the air. There appeared to be no sign of animal life on this hill at all. I looked through the grass and found not one single ant, beetle, nor grub. How very odd, I thought.

Then suddenly, I felt the distinct impression that I was being watched. I turned and saw, standing on a rock not five feet from me, a tiny little rabbit. It was staring at me fiercely with its large black eyes. But upon closer examiation, I realized it was some sort of Faerie that I had never seen before. It was covered with white fur and had long moth-like antennae that looked decidedly rabbit-like. It even twitched its nose in the most adorable fashion. I was suddenly overcome with the urge to pet this little faerie-rabbit, and I began to walk toward it, slowly so as not to startle it.

It watched me intently but did not move. Then my reverie was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a shadow on the grass between me and the faerie-rabbit. In that moment I heard a piercing shriek as a flapping mass of black swept in front of me, directly toward the faerie. I knew at once that it was a hawk which had chosen this moment to dive on the defenseless faerie, which must have looked quite like a rabbit from up high.

But what happened next startled me immensely. An instant before the hawk struck, the faerie dropped out of sight, and large net shot into the air, instantly entangling the hawk. Stumbling backward in surprise, I saw the hawk struggling on the ground, but it was soon silenced by a horde of tiny little faerie-rabbits, each equipped with a tiny little sword. Several of them pointed at me and gestured silently to their brothers to join them in attack.

I turned and ran for my life. I heard nothing behind me, so I did not know if they were pursuing me or not. But I tripped over something and tumbled down the hillside nearly breaking my neck in the fall. Later I found a tiny little rope looped around my left foot. Studying the rope through a Patented Higgin’s Optical-investigator, I found the rope to have been artfully woven from find strands taken from bird feathers.

So though some faeries may be victimized by hawks and their ilk, there are some places where the reverse is the case. I intend to revisit Hollowtop Hill one of these days, to continue my observations. But I’m not entirely certain what steps I should take to maintain my safety.

As for the faerie-rabbits, I could not find them recorded in any of the books of faerie-kind in my library. Have any of you heard of this species? If not, perhaps it is a species that requires a name. At first I thought perhaps to call it the Codwillip faerie, but as a scientist, I should ever endeavor to maintain my humility in the observation of mother nature’s wonders. Therefore I suggest calling it the Hollowtop Hill Pseudobunny.