kestrels

BREAKING NEWS: far too many humans are horrible Republicans, excuse the redundancy, but that’s not news. What’s news is I caught a glimpse of a near-fledgling American Kestrel in the corner cornice this afternoon!Looks like a male with those spots. He pulled this ribbon, some leftover from the previous (Starling, methinks) occupants of this cornice,…

Chasing crows and being chased by crows, our American Kestrels pause briefly together in the late breeding season. There should be youngsters in the cornice nest, but there’s been no external sign of them with these eyes yet. A very quick search for kestrel cavity nest cams in the US turned up little this season,…

Notice anything on this bare branch of a avian perch, I mean besides a male American Kestrel and some whitewash?Closer… On Monday, you may have been puzzled by my statement about the first living dragonfly seen this year outside my window. Because I’d seen these remains earlier. It’s a dragonfly wing and what looks like…

Female.Male. He lost one of his middle tail feathers. It was broken more than half way down and hanging at odd angles by a rachis thread for a whole day.Then he had a piece of head fluff coming off the top for most of another day. There have been almost daily Fish Crow/American Kestrel battles.…

The male of the #BrooklynKestrels pair is stashing prey in a rotted-out knot in his favorite perching tree. This photo is through the screen, rain, and foliage. But with those two little songbird feet sticking up like an amateur gangland corpse disposal, you get the drift. Have seen a few bodies cached here since discovering…

The female is rarely seen these days. She emerges from the cornice nest and flies up to the London Plane on 41st Street to take food bought up by her mate. Here she briefly perches on the avenue London Plane.It gets gory from here… The male with prey in the fog.An hour later, the fog…

I wrote about the local Kestrels for the Brooklyn Bird Club’s excellent Clapper Rail. Several days of hunting portrayed here. By now, I guess that there are young in the nest.

We had to be away from the #BrooklynKestrels Lookout for a week. All the trees leafed out in our absence. Except for this bare branch sticking upright across the street. Yes! The wee falcons are still going strong. Yesterday morning around 8:30 the male announced his presence with swirling call. He had prey. The female…