kestrels
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Raptor Wednesday
When I spotted this male American Kestrel on the ground and some of the smaller tombstones, I thought, whoa, a way of hunting I’ve never seen before! But look at that left wing. It’s damaged. I followed. This, of course, made the bird move away from me. I formulated a make-shift falcon-catching situation out of…
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Kestrels
This male is a hell of a provider. I’ve seen three feedings per day recently, in which the male will bring prey to a perch, pluck and eat some, and then noisily give to the female. Caught a glimpse of her. She’s coming out of the nest to take food. He has popped into the…
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Raptor Wednesday
Other American Kestrels. Six or seven blocks away from home as the falcon flies is Green-Wood Cemetery. From one corner of the cemetery, you can see the top corner of my apartment building, so naturally I wonder if the #BrooklynKestrels pair have hunted there.This is a male I saw recently in Green-Wood, above Sylvan Water.…
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The Day in Kestrels
The male has now been spotted on our fire escape three times. The third time he left this corpse, which he later retrieved. House Sparrow, I think: very grey with a feather of rufous or chestnut. It’s dangerous out there! (Four separate bird corpses are pictured in this sequence.) While the male was on the…
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Kestrel Food
What is this? He thought it was edible.American Kestrels eat birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects. Saw a picture recently of a male working on a Garter Snake. Some years ago, I became aware of Fence Lizards in the city because of a picture making the rounds of a kestrel flying to a nest with one…
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Keeping Up With The Kestrels
…is exhausting! The distinctive calling of the birds brings us to the windows throughout the day.They seem to be very effective hunters. In the photo above, the male is gripping a dead sparrow. You can just see the sparrow’s little toes. As he usually does, he proceeded to eat the sparrow’s head. Then he plucked…
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Some Kestrel Notes
I’ve previously stated that, like raptors in general, American Kestrels have sexual dimorphism: the female is larger. But the difference is slight for these small falcons, and the literature says that there can be some overlap. The male of a pair can sometimes be larger. Over the last three months, the #BrooklynKestrels have sometimes appeared…
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Kestrel Week In Review
Saturday. The female had some prey, a small bird, probably House Sparrow. There aren’t many other options around here, yet. She flew down to the roof with her prey, then soon after flew up to another pipe without it. Too soon to have plucked, eaten the prey. Did she cache it?Wednesday.Walking up the hill after…
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Raptor Wednesday
Merlins (Falco columbarius) like the high points.Where they will sometimes perch for quite a while on the look-out for birds to pursue.Slightly larger than American Kestrels, Merlins are much rarer in the city.
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Kestrels Update
A favored perch. For a few days. We thought it was too crowded up there for sex, but it wasn’t.When you see a bird doing a series of wide-open yawn-like movements, they’re probably yawping up a pellet of undigested remains of yesterday’s meal. Two of these pellets are visible on this platform, there’s another behind…
Backyard and Beyond 