elsewhere<\/a> on this blog with Northern Harriers and I suspect that’s one of the reasons that kestrels try to avoid swallowing as much fur as possible.\u00a0 When opening up the body cavity they often get a beak-full of fur and they try to “spit out” as much of it as possible which can be difficult because it sticks to their wet beak, mouth and tongue.\u00a0 Here you can see some of it flying off with the breeze.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-8648.jpg\" "\\"American")
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Canon 7D, 1\/500, f\/8, ISO 500, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nTo get rid of the sticky fur they often have to shake their head vigorously.\u00a0 I thought the motion blur of the head\u00a0in this photo was effective in showing that behavior, especially with the clump of hair flying off to the right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-3042.jpg\" "\\"American")
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Canon 40D, 1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nThey do the same thing with feathers when their prey is a song bird.\u00a0 This is one of the few times I witnessed a kestrel with a bird kill – usually it’s a vole, occasionally a mouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6493.jpg\" "\\"American")
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Canon 40D, 1\/2500, f\/9, ISO 500, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nToward the end of the meal the body cavities have been emptied and most of the muscles consumed.\u00a0 There’s not much left but an empty bag of skin and fur with legs and tail attached.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6507.jpg\" "\\"American")
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Canon 40D, 1\/2000, f\/9, ISO 500, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nAt this point the kestrel will sometimes discard the rest of the carcass and fly away.\u00a0 Other times, especially during winter when it’s very cold and food is at a premium they will swallow what’s left in one gulp.\u00a0 This bird flew away with what was left of the mouse (I believe it to be a mouse and not a vole because of the long tail).<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6002.jpg\" "\\"American")
\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1250, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc (I chose f\/10 for more DOF\u00a0because this bird let me get very close)<\/em><\/p>\nThis male kestrel pulled off strips of fur-covered hide from the back of the mouse.\u00a0 Some of them he swallowed and some he didn’t – probably dependent on the amount of flesh each piece had.\u00a0 But then he did something that surprised me.<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6040.jpg\" "\\"American")
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\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc <\/em><\/em><\/p>\nI had never before\u00a0seen a kestrel rip off the tail like this.\u00a0 When he did I fully expected him to discard it since it’s mostly\u00a0bone and fur\u00a0but that’s not what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6052.jpg\" "\\"American")
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\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nHe decided to attempt to swallow the tail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6063.jpg\" "\\"American")
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\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nHe really struggled getting it down.<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6069.jpg\" "\\"American")
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\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/em><\/p>\nThe first time he tried it just wouldn’t go all the way down so he hacked it up and started all over again.<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6071.jpg\" "\\"American")
\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nIn fact, this is the second<\/em> attempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6083.jpg\" "\\"American")
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\u00a0\u00a0Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nAt this point I thought he’d have to bring the tail back up again and abandon his attempt to swallow it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-6086.jpg\" "\\"American")
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Canon 7D, 1\/1000, f\/10, ISO 400, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nBut in the end he succeeded in getting it down.\u00a0 Here the tail has just disappeared down the throat.\u00a0 He actually swallowed a few more bites of the mouse after this, which amazed me.\u00a0 They must have been difficult to swallow since that long tail would have extended from the stomach to the back of the throat but he somehow managed to do it.<\/p>\n
I’d like to stress than none of these birds were baited.\u00a0 Both mice and voles are readily available at the refuge where I usually photograph kestrels and these birds came by their prey naturally.<\/p>\n
Ron\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0I’ve always found it fascinating to watch these little falcons eat.\u00a0 A gruesome experience to be sure but so much more interesting than observing a raptor such as an owl who simply\u00a0swallows its prey whole.\u00a0 And if you watch carefully there’s a whole lot more going on during the process than first meets the eye.\u00a0 Kestrels can\u00a0be pretty picky eaters.\u00a0 I’ve documented\u00a0in another post\u00a0on this blog that they often\u00a0refuse to eat the intestinal tract of their prey and deliberately discard it.\u00a0 Kestrels, like other raptors, eject pellets of indigestible materials like fur, feathers, chitin and bone.\u00a0 All food that is swallowed first goes to the crop.\u00a0 From there the usable food continues on to the stomach\u00a0but the indigestibles stay in the crop, are formed into a pellet and regurgitated\u00a0roughly 23 hours (in the case of\u00a0kestrels)\u00a0after the meal was consumed.\u00a0 \u00a0 Canon 7D, 1\/800, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc The kestrels I’ve watched eating\u00a0voles and mice\u00a0typically eat the brain, decapitate the rodent, then go for the soft internal protein rich muscles and other organs (discarding the intestines).\u00a0\u00a0 Since kestrels tear their prey into bite-sized pieces they can pick and choose what they actually swallow.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Canon 7D, 1\/400, f\/8, ISO 640, 500mm f\/4, 1.4 tc Pellet expulsion can be difficult and traumatic as I’ve documented elsewhere on this blog with Northern Harriers and I suspect that’s one of the reasons that kestrels try to avoid swallowing as much fur as possible.\u00a0 When opening up the body cavity they often get a beak-full of…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[340,392],"tags":[28,67,68,131,132,191,222,223,245,256,260,265,315],"class_list":["post-1743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-american-kestrel","tag-canon-500mm-f4","tag-canon-7d","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-falcon","tag-kestrel","tag-motion-blur","tag-mouse","tag-pellet","tag-prey","tag-raptor","tag-regurgitate","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-s7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-8706.jpg\" "\\"American")
<\/p>\n![\"American](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/american-kestrel-86551.jpg\" "\\"American")
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