American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator

By Kate Davis and Rob Palmer

Colorful, noisy, and brash, the American Kestrel is the most endearing of North America’s raptors. With its vivid rufous and blue-gray plumage, peppered with dashes of black and white, this bird of prey is instantly recognizable to both novice and expert bird watchers, whether it’sdiving for an insect on the wing or hovering over an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9780878426447

Book preview

Thanks to Sally Phillips, my mom. —KATE DAVIS

AMERICAN

KESTREL

Pint-Sized Predator

KATE DAVIS

Photographs by

KATE DAVIS AND ROB PALMER

© 2014 Kate Davis

Photographs © by Kate Davis and Rob Palmer

Front cover photo by Rob Palmer

Back cover photo by Kate Davis

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Kate, 1959- author.

American kestrel : pint-sized predator / Kate Davis ; photographs by Kate Davis and Rob Palmer.

   pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-87842-636-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. American kestrel. I. Title.

QL696.F34D378 2014

598.9’6—dc23

2014024832

PRINTED IN HONG KONG

P.O. Box 2399 • Missoula, MT 59806 • 406-728-1900

800-234-5308 • [e-mail]

www.mountain-press.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

The Killy Hawk and Its Cohorts

Fighter Aces: Kestrels in Combat

Falcon Families

Fit for Departure

Kestrels in the Twenty-First Century

American Kestrel Partnership

Building a Kestrel Home

References

Index

The male American Kestrel’s plumage is striking: rufous back and slate-gray wings with a row of white spots on their trailing edge. —ROB PALMER

Acknowledgments

The spark of inspiration for this book came in January of 2012, during the first American Kestrel Partnership meeting, a gathering of thirty American Kestrel experts and aficionados from around North America. The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho, hosted this meeting, in which we brainstormed about the status and uncertain future of our favorite little falcon. I thank the Peregrine Fund for their ongoing efforts to monitor populations and improve the lives of kestrels across the continent.

Thanks also go to Chris McClure, PhD, director of the American Kestrel Partnership, for his addition of the final chapter, and for his steadfast belief in his and our project of monitoring and augmenting kestrel populations.

I met John Smallwood, PhD, at my first Raptor Research Foundation Conference in 2004 in Bakersfield, California, and we have become great friends over the years, finding that we have a lot more in common than only birds (like music!). He graciously offered his thoughtful edits to the science portion of the book, keeping me honest.

Joel Jeep Pagel was instrumental in editing Falcons of North America, a book I published in 2008, and Joel stepped up again to greatly help with the chapter "Kestrels in the Twenty-First Century." Dan Varland lent a hand as well.

Photographer Rob Palmer and I have been pals for over a decade. This is our third book together. Falcons of North America was our first, followed by Raptors of the West, both completed with Nick Dunlop. Raptors won the National Outdoor Book Award in 2012. Jeep, Dan, and Rob have been friends since that historic raptor conference in 2004, showing how one event can shape a life forever.

Rob’s outstanding images grace these pages and help round out the story of the American Kestrel, the best and brightest of the falcons.

A kestrel with a grasshopper in her beak makes her way back to the nest. These insects are easy and abundant prey during summer. —KATE DAVIS

The Killy Hawk and Its Cohorts

Female kestrels (top) are usually a bit larger. The sexes can be told apart by plumage, a rather uncommon trait in the raptor world. —KATE DAVIS

Among the ranks of North American raptors, American Kestrels hold the top honor as most endearing, winning praise from bird watchers and neophytes alike. Beautiful little bird and gotta love a kestrel are common expressions of this affection.

Kestrels are probably familiar to just about anyone who frequents farmland and fields and is observant of their surroundings. Colorful, noisy, brash, and (at least until recently) omnipresent, kestrels are part of the landscape. The prettiest and jauntiest of our Hawks is how naturalist Elliott Coues described them in 1874. Perhaps ornithologist William Brewster made the most-quoted early observation, describing them as most lighthearted and frolicsome. In 1899 Neltje Blanchan wrote that the kestrel’s charming hovering posture gives its flight a special grace…. Every farmer’s boy knows the voice of the killy hawk.

In their 1939 book Hawks in the Hand, researchers John and Frank Craighead call kestrels the smallest and brightest, referring to their size—about that of a robin or Killdeer—and vivid plumage of rufous and blue-gray with dashes of black and white. Perhaps the description is also a nod to the kestrel’s savvy hunting strategies, since it preys upon a wide variety of vertebrates and invertebrates. These