The Beauty of the Kestrel

Often on a Sunday Peter and I go birding.  Today we spotted a Kestrel sitting on a telephone wire.   

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Kestrels are the smallest falcon and they have very sharp eyesight.  We watched this bird sit quietly looking on the ground for food.  All of a sudden he swooped to the ground and then flew to the top of a telephone pole with an insect.  He stayed there and ate his snack  – probably a grasshopper.  I enjoyed his feather patterns of peach, reds, gray, brown, and yellow mixed with beige. 

The Kestrel is the most colorful of all raptors.  He has a pair of vertical black stripes on each side of his face often called a moustache or sideburns.  He is most often seen in deserts and grasslands that extend to alpine meadows

I was reminded of the Kestrel we saw in the desert near Picacho Peak AZ.  We noticed a bird making several trips to one of the trunks of a dead palm tree.  Kestrels use other bird’s nests for their homes and this Kestrel probably had babies in the nest.  Quite an extraordinary sight!