Photographing a male Sparrowhawk

By regular observation I'm fairly sure there are two Sparrowhawks consistently operating around my local area, one male and one female. I have had numerous encounters with the male as he has been attacking song birds in this area, including in my garden, on a regular basis for a few years and I have photographed him on several occasions. Although he is an extremely elusive bird he does have a regular flight path and MO and he rarely deviates from them. However, in order to photograph him successfully I need to be in my permanent hide, hidden behind Camouflage netting. I have to predict which branch he is going to perch on because if he misses his target then he only lands on a branch for a maximum of two or three seconds before flying off. Consequently, there is rarely enough time to reach for a lens and focus it because these birds live on their wits and the merest of movements or slightest noise will cause them to fly off. To overcome this problem I select a branch and auto focus on it and then switch off the auto focus to prevent any 'Hunting' by the auto focus system at the critical moment, I also switch off the image stabilization because even the slight noise it makes is enough to spook him. I also have to choose a smaller lens eg 300mm instead of 600mm to have more chance of framing the bird, (300mm lens covers a wider area). I also use my 1D Mk 2 camera for an even wider field of view, so with these mounted on a tripod and with a three foot corded shutter release it's just a matter of waiting for him to land, hopefully on the right branch and then immediately fire the shutter and hold it down until he flies off. I can usually manage to fire off between ten and twenty shots, (8.5 frames / Second) before he realises I'm there. If he lands on the wrong branch, although it's tempting, I never try and move because he will fly off and not return; keeping still will give him the confidence to perhaps return later. This may seem very involved but it's what's required to photograph this particular bird.
I hope this may be of some use to anybody interested in this type of wildlife photography.