Common Kestrel

Identification

A small, long-tailed falcon, 32–39 cm long, with pointed wings that look almost sickle-shaped from below. The sexes differ sharply. Males have a blue-grey head and tail, a warm rufous-brown back freckled with black spots, and a broad black band near the tip of the grey tail. Females are entirely rufous-brown above with heavy barring down the back and a barred brown tail — from a distance the two can look like different birds.

The signature behaviour is the hover: the bird hangs in the air on rapidly beating wings, head locked motionless as it scans the grass below, a trick that has earned it the old name windhover. It hunts largely by sight and can detect ultraviolet light reflected from the urine trails voles leave through vegetation, effectively reading the runways of its prey. Voles make up much of the diet, topped up with shrews, insects, lizards and the occasional small bird. It does not build a nest, laying instead in a tree cavity, a hole in a building, a cliff niche or a nest box, and it will readily take to towns and motorway verges. The call is a fast, shrill, repeated kee-kee-kee.

Watch for it perched on roadside wires and fence posts, or hanging over rough grass and stubble; the hover followed by a sudden drop is unmistakable and needs no other clue. In winter it becomes one of the most conspicuous raptors of lowland farmland, and in mild years resident birds never leave.