American Kestrel

About the American Kestrel

The American Kestrel is North America's smallest falcon and one of its most colorful raptors. Males wear slate-blue wings against a rusty back and tail; females are warm rufous barred with black. Both show the double black "sideburn" stripes on a white face that make the species unmistakable even at highway speed.

Kestrels hunt from wires and treetops, bobbing their tails as they scan, and they are one of the few falcons that routinely hover -- hanging in the wind on rapid wingbeats before dropping onto a grasshopper or mouse. That habit alone separates them from every other small raptor on a Texas fence line.

In Texas the kestrel is mostly a winter bird. From October through March they space themselves out along rural roads across the state, each bird defending its own stretch of wire. My photos here come from those winter territories -- Granger Lake farm country, the Rio Grande Valley, and the Hill Country around Inks Lake.

A kestrel's tolerance for a slowly approaching vehicle makes the car the best blind you own. Cut the engine early, shoot from the window, and take your frames before that last ten feet -- that is the distance that always flushes them.