🐦 Apprentice Birds · 7 min
The American Kestrel
Why this matters
If you fly one, its small margins will teach you weight management faster than any red-tail. If you do not, the exam will still ask you eight questions about it.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Identify an American Kestrel in the field by behaviour
- Describe how kestrel plumage and molt differ from other falcons
- List the special husbandry demands of the species
Identification, by what it does
Three behaviours together are the classic field marks: hovering, bobbing the head, and pumping the tail up and down on landing. A very small raptor hovering twenty feet over an open field in New York is a Kestrel. There is nothing shy about the species; it lives, hunts, nests and perches in the open. Even hunting from a pole, it will often fly out over the spot where it saw movement and hover there before dropping.
In summer its hunting style is adapted to grasshoppers and mice. Wintering birds show a much more typical falcon style when taking small birds. Its hunting style most closely resembles that of the Merlin.
Plumage and molt
The Kestrel is the falcon in which sexual dimorphism shows in both plumage colour and pattern. It is also the bird that lacks a distinctive immature plumage: first-year plumage is very like adult plumage. Its first molt is unusual too, replacing body plumage but not the large wing and tail feathers in late summer, so the first body plumage is barely fully grown before it starts to molt again.
Despite the old name "American Sparrowhawk," it is not closely related to the Eurasian Sparrowhawk, which is a small Accipiter close to our Sharp-shinned Hawk. The Kestrel is the smallest North American falcon.
Husbandry
The falconer must be attentive to weight management, other avian predators, and injuries from bating, all three. Traditional equipment mostly does not apply: bells, hoods and traditional jesses are not routinely used on Kestrels. Kestrels tame so thoroughly that a hood offers little, and one is very hard to fit; bells light enough for the bird are too quiet to be useful; and flying with traditional slitted jesses is illegal in any case.
The species' characteristic vice is carrying, a habit that serves it in the wild and ruins falconry. It can be trained out with consistency, and a weighted lure line helps. It is a good idea to have a Kestrel wedded to the lure before flying it free, both for conditioning and for recovery.
From the field
Your Kestrel is 3 grams below its normal flying weight on a morning that dropped to 18 degrees F. What has changed? Cold weather raises the energy a small bird burns overnight, and a Kestrel has almost no reserve. Three grams on a 110 gram bird is nearly 3% of its body weight. Feed it up and do not fly today; a Kestrel at the bottom of its range in hard cold is the classic way to lose one.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.