kestrels
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Raptor Wednesday
Other (?) Kestrels:This one swooped across our path in Green-Wood, shot across 5th Avenue and disappeared behind the buildings there. It soon emerged with prey in talon. House Sparrow, I guess.We know there are at least two males in the area, because we’ve seen them either together or simultaneously. This shot, from earlier this month,…
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Kestrel Check-In
Check. Check. Check.All these shots are from this week. The last two were on Thursday afternoon. I saw the female feed on small birds, presumably House Sparrows, twice within an hour. She’s packing in the food for egg-laying: remember, an American Kestrel egg represents 11% of the female’s body weight.For raptor friends, the scrape cam…
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Even More Sharp-shinned
As I was preparing to head out the door last Sunday, the dawn of DST, I glanced out the window occasionally to see if the Kestrels would show up at the crack of dawn. They don’t set their clocks forward, after all. A bird whooshed into the London Plain across the street and hop-skipped-flew up…
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Raptor Wednesday
Sharpie! The little Accipiter, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Accipiter striatus.This was the bird who did not like our male American Kestrel back in the middle of February.But it wasn’t all sortie after sortie.This is a juvenile female. The males are substantially smaller: on average just a midge smaller than an American Kestrel, in fact. The one time…
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Kestrel Mania, Part XXX
The American Kestrels were extremely busy yesterday morning. During Wednesday’s storm, I saw neither skin nor feather of them, as expected. But the male was out bright and early in the rich tones of dawn on Thursday. He soon flew over to the chimney, and several minutes later the female landed on the nearby roof…
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Dawn Kestrel
Sunrise on the American Kestrel male this morning, a few minutes before he and the female mated on their favorite roof-top pipe.
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American Kestrel Update
Tis the season for copulation.Note how the male’s talons are bunched up. He can’t, after all, grab hold of her back with those sharp claws. I noticed this in an Instragramer’s photo of mating Osprey recently, where the scale was rather larger but the principle the same. Bird mating is brief. The balancing act —…
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Kestrel Week VII
A male American Kestrel in the rain.This London Plane tree across the street has been the scene of near daily Kestrel action. It’s definitely one of the bird’s perching spots. This is where the great battle with the Sharp-shinned Hawk took place, too.Two days later, in the sun. Same tree. This time the bird was…
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Kestrel Week VI
This is a Peregrine on St. Michael’s at 42nd & 4th Avenue.And this is a near approximation of what the church looks like from my apartment. See the Kestrel up there?I’m physically closer to the church for this one because I hurried down the two avenue blocks to confirm the sighting. I hadn’t seen Kestrels…
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Kestrel Week V
This was the first sign of a female Kestrel in the neighborhood. I first saw her January 13th. I’d been seeing males in Green-Wood, on Sunset Park High School, and on the 40th Street antenna, an elaborate, two-pronged structure used by a car service, since December.This is the second of three sightings of a male…
Backyard and Beyond 