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    American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator
    American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator
    American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator
    Ebook149 pages56 minutes

    American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator

    By Kate Davis and Rob Palmer

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    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

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMountain Press Publishing Company
    Release dateAug 5, 2015
    ISBN9780878426447
    American Kestrel: Pint-Sized Predator

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    • 3/5
      If you're a birder, two or three stars. If you're an average person who wants to learn a little about a very cool bird, four stars. It struck me as more of a coffeetable book than anything else, with lots of pictures (very good pictures, I'll add) and not all that much in the way of writing. As a new-but-avid birder I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know, but someone who knows nothing about falcons would probably feel very differently.

    Book preview

    American Kestrel - Kate Davis

    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 • info@mtnpress.com

    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

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