{"id":18680,"date":"2013-09-24T06:02:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T12:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18680"},"modified":"2013-09-24T06:02:34","modified_gmt":"2013-09-24T12:02:34","slug":"some-good-news-on-the-kestrel-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/24\/some-good-news-on-the-kestrel-front\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Good News On The Kestrel Front"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is\u00a0largely about good news rather than good images.<\/p>\n

Several weeks ago I reported here<\/a> about the alarming decline of the American Kestrel in most of North America.\u00a0 That decline has been apparent to me locally (Utah)\u00a0as I’m seeing and photographing far fewer of them than in the past.\u00a0\u00a0Other more scientific and reliable\u00a0sources report similar declines in many areas of the continent.<\/p>\n

But apparently there are pockets of habitat where kestrels are still thriving and one of them is the Centennial Valley of southwest Montana.\u00a0 I spent roughly 16 days in the valley this spring, \u00a0summer and fall, \u00a0spread out over four trips and it became increasingly clear as the season wore on that kestrels\u00a0there are doing just fine.\u00a0 The last trip in early September was particularly encouraging as these little falcons seemed to be found in good numbers in all habitats where one might expect to find them.\u00a0 Based on the numbers of birds I saw (and on one report from a very bird-knowledgeable gentleman who lives in the valley) the kestrel nesting season there was a highly successful one.<\/p>\n

Each of these images was taken on my recent September trip to the valley.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Our Utah kestrels prey largely on voles which requires a particular hunting style that I’m used to – flying fairly low over vole habitat, hovering, then diving on potential prey.\u00a0 But the birds in the Centennial Valley hunt mostly grasshoppers which\u00a0calls for\u00a0a different technique.\u00a0 Grasshoppers are numerous (that’s an understatement), smaller than voles and they don’t burrow as adults so the kestrels typically hunt from low perches like fence posts and fence wires or moderately higher perches such as utility wires and poles.<\/p>\n

They’re usually scanning the ground and vegetation almost directly below them for “hoppers”\u00a0so when they spot one they typically drop almost straight down from their hunting perch.\u00a0 This bird is looking for grasshoppers almost directly beneath its barbed wire perch.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Seconds later it plunged after\u00a0a grasshopper into this prickly plant just behind the fence wire but this time it came up empty.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

The same bird then landed on this nearby metal fence post and continued hunting with the same technique.\u00a0 As you can see from its launch posture and the direction it’s looking,\u00a0the kestrel’s potential prey is just below the post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

When hunting from utility wires which are much further off the ground, their drop onto prey can look pretty dramatic as they\u00a0fall almost straight down with wings still held tight against their bodies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

As numerous as\u00a0these birds\u00a0were in the valley this summer, like most kestrels they were very difficult to approach so I got few quality images of them.\u00a0 This one had been eating a grasshopper but dropped it (apparently deliberately) as I approached and gave me this look back just before it took off.\u00a0 \u00a0I felt badly that I might have interrupted its meal but I’m confident that it would have no trouble catching as many\u00a0grasshoppers as it could eat.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons the kestrels are doing so well here is that the Centennial Valley is one of the most pristine areas left in the country.\u00a0 One of the suspected causes of the dramatic drop in kestrel numbers is chemical contamination but the valley and nearby mountains would be relatively free of pesticides.\u00a0 Pure speculation on my part…<\/p>\n

I’m not na\u00efve enough to believe that this single healthy population is an indicator of an end to the cause of\u00a0the kestrel’s decline but I was delighted to see so many of them in the valley and if the species ever does make a comeback it will likely be pockets of thriving birds like this one that fuel their recovery.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several weeks ago I reported here about the alarming decline of the American Kestrel in most of North America. That decline has been apparent to me locally (Utah) as I’m seeing and photographing far fewer of them than in the past. Other more scientific and reliable sources report similar declines in many areas of the continent.<\/p>\n

But apparently there are pockets of habitat where kestrels are still thriving and one of them is the Centennial Valley of southwest Montana. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18681,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[340,334,8,360],"tags":[28,555,1638,131,132,824,1315,263,1666],"class_list":["post-18680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-american-kestrel","tag-centennial-valley","tag-decline","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-falcon","tag-grasshopper","tag-hunting-technique","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-uah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/american-kestrel-0032-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Ri","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18680","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}