Tiny but Fierce: The American Kestrel

One of the behaviors I learned growing up, riding next to my dad in the car, was the hunch over the steering wheel as you drive--the better to peer up at a bird soaring high overhead or perched on a wire as we sped past. I recall the agitation turning to mild alarm the longer he retained this position, eyes seemingly focused far from the road ahead. Sometimes the object of his attention would be named and pointed out, but rarely was I able to spot the distant bird.

A few decades later, I am the one alarming my passengers with this hunch, though today I was fortunately alone when I spotted the little bird sitting on a wire near the Sycamore Apartments. At a glance it looked like another mourning dove, but the proportions were a bit off. The tail squared off instead of pointed, and the head much larger than the relatively delicate rounded noggin of the dove. A glimpse of rusty orange feathers sealed it: an American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)! 

After leaping from the car, flashers on and still running on the side of the road, I managed to get a couple of shots before it flew off over the corn stubble to the north. 

These tiny falcons are amazingly beautiful, with males and females sporting quite different colors: Males with a rusty-orange back and slate-blue wings; females with the rusty back and wings, as well as barring on the tail feathers that is absent in the male. I remember seeing their images in a bird guide found in my grandparents' basement, the colors appealing to me much as did those of the gaudy Painted Buntings.

They hunt prey suited to their small size: grasshoppers and mice, as well as small lizards and birds. Studies have shown that nearly three-quarters of their diet is made up of invertebrates. They will hunt from those wires and elevated perches, watching for motion on the ground. Sometimes they can be seen hovering over a field as they survey the ground below. 

Though they are our most common falcon, the American Kestrel's population has declined by half over the last fifty years, for reasons in part familiar to anyone who pays attention to ecology: habitat loss and pesticide use. As cavity nesters, Kestrels rely on those big snags (helpfully excavated by woodpeckers in previous seasons) to reproduce, and people often don't like leaving those big dead trees and scrubby habitat on their property. And because so much of their diet is made up of insects, our human habit of poisoning those insects somewhat indiscriminately effectively limits the availability of their most common food items. 

As I turned back to my car, I saw the Kestrel hovering stationary against the wind. There was no dive toward the ground, but instead the bird wheeled back toward the power lines where it perched to watch again.