Don’t let its small size fool you — the American kestrel is a killer
Hawks galore have been sweeping through our skies since August on the way to winter homes in Latin America, while a diminutive falcon stays in Houston.
It’s an America kestrel that perches on power lines, fences, posts and buildings. The ubiquitous falcon strikes no imposing pose; it could be overlooked as just another bird on a wire. Until it flies.
Jetting forth on a nearly 2-foot wingspan of narrow, pointed wings, the petite but menacing falcon suddenly hovers in midair, fluttering like a butterfly. Its head points toward the ground while fixing its prey in its sights as the tail torques to vagaries of the wind.
Then the kestrel arches its wings like scythes and zooms to the ground to seize an unsuspecting mouse in its sharp talons. The bird’s beak immediately clamps down on the rodent’s neck, crushing the spine.
The kestrel rips apart the flesh of the disabled mouse with a tomial tooth, the cutting edge of the beak’s upper mandible. But the bird will not devour the mouse in one gluttonous feast.
Instead, the falcon will store pieces of mouse meat in crevices of fence posts or light
poles and in clumps of grass. It’s like putting away leftovers, so as not to waste food. Kestrels economize, too.
Mouse meat is not the kestrel’s sole diet. The bird readily eats snakes, beetles and insects.
Kestrels used to be called sparrow hawks in field guides. But less than 10 percent of the bird’s diet consisted of sparrows and other songbirds. So the name went to kestrel, from the French word crécelle , a musical rattle sounding like the bird’s call notes — “kee-kee-keekee.”
Aside from its indelicate dining, the male American kestrel is a handsome devil. It has a coppery back and tail set against bluish-gray wings darkened at the ends. Its gray cap has a coppery patch, and its breast is cinnamon with a white belly dotted in black spots.
The female is similar, but has a browner cast and a white underside with cinnamon streaks. Both sexes have twin black mustaches streaking down the sides of their white faces.
Watch a kestrel perch stock-still on a wire. See its head bob for a parallax view to judge the distance to prey, like a mouse on the ground.
The tail begins wagging just before the miniature falcon bolts into the sky, helicoptering momentarily, and then plunging to the ground for a kill. Poor mouse.