kestrels
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Kestrel Week IV
A male American Kestrel in Green-Wood. The wide black bar on the tail so nicely fanned below is a good way to ID the male in flight, since the blue wings can’t be seen from below.These are some highlights from the literature: self-explanatory titles edition: “American Kestrel Eating Carrion” “American Kestrel Transports Norway Rat” (“labored…
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Kestrel Week III
Headless Kestrel on Rooftop Bar! They absolutely love old school TV antennas, which still litter the rooftops of Brooklyn, thank goodness. And strange pipes shooting up from rooftops. This is a rare neighborhood appearance by a female. There is no slate blue on her wings and she has more subdued head-patterning. She also doesn’t have…
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Kestrel Week II
A pair of American Kestrels has been cavorting around, all visible from our windows. Here they’re perching on a chimney pot (you may recognize it from previous Kestrel and Cooper’s Hawk perching).Male left, female right. I saw a pair — this one or another? — mating in January. March-April is more like it, with May…
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Kestrel Week I
By the power invested in me by myself and the internet, I declare this week to be American Kestrel Week here in Brooklyn! Here’s a male Falco sparverius perched in a London Plane in the ‘hood. Right next to my apartment building, as a matter of fact. Often called North America’s smallest raptor, this colorful…
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Kestrel Week Preview
The view the other morning. The male American Kestrel arrived first. We heard him before we saw him, as has been typical of the last week, when these little falcons have been in the neighborhood every day. The Starlings followed. But then, quick as a flash, the Starlings disappeared.Yes, it suddenly turned into a two-raptor morning.*…
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Kestrel Wednesday
I walked by the Kestrel perch the next day, on the off-chance he would be there. Nope. But I was on a round-trip errand, so when I returned, there he was. Not the same branch, but the same linden. This time I was on the avenue, meaning rather closer to his height on the tree…
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Raptor Wednesday
Well, hello there! My first sight of this male American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) was a dark shape in a tree. The winter sun is getting so low on the horizon that even at 1:30 in the afternoon every bird with the sun behind it looks like a Starling.Him falcon was mighty obliging, though, allowing me…
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Kestrels, Kestrels, We’ve Got Kestrels!
Male Falco sparverius at Floyd Bennett Field, where the grasslands, currently mown, can often be a good place to see this most common of NYC raptors. This one is particularly painterly with those spots (and the cloudy day).Here is a female, farther away from the camera. Her wings don’t have the blue of the male…
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American Kestrel
Falco sparverius male. The blue wings sex the bird.Hunting amidst the strollers at the NYBG. Came up empty-taloned from a pass into the stubble, just some wisps of grass. With his head turned here, you can see the two black patches on the back of his head. These are ocelli, or false eyes. The standard…
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Borough Kestrels
This male Kestrel zoomed up to the top of Green-Wood’s Gothic Revival gate while a Red-tailed Hawk circled overhead. Then it made an unsuccessful dive at a Monk Parakeet, a bird roughly its own size. I’ve noted Kestrels up there before.This one found the lights and goal posts of the football field at Floyd Bennett…
Backyard and Beyond 