The Beauty of the Kestrel
Often on a Sunday Peter and I go birding. Today we spotted a Kestrel sitting on a telephone wire. . 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 nes...