Backyard and Beyond

A Red-tailed Hawk glides down down with its wings hunched up. I though it was a plastic bag in the air at first. Then it landed in this Eastern Cottonwood and voila, the local American Kestrel male let up a war-cry and came calling.

The Red-tail soon departed, bearing a stick in talons for a nest. The little falcon flew up to his regular perch.

I don’t know if this is the same male, seen several days earlier some 15 blocks away. One day this spring, I spied a pair of American Kestrel copulating on St. Michael’s at 4th and 42nd St and quickly swung my scope over to 4th and 32nd, where there’s a Kestrel nest this year. At least one bird was visible there. So potentially two pairs in the immediate area.