American Kestrel Having Breakfast

Here's a picture of an American Kestrel I met early last autumn. Based on the blueness, I'm pretty sure this is a male kestrel. And this kestrel seems to be eating breakfast up in its tree. It's pretty hard to say what breakfast is composed of, though it seems bigger than the insects and other invertebrates that kestrels frequently eat.

Though Northern Flickers and American Red Squirrels have been reported as kestrel prey, the American Kestrel is a pretty small predator (America's smallest falcon) and those are probably outliers. The best candidates are probably mice/voles/shrews or one of our small birds. And it's probably something that, before its encounter with the kestrel, would have been considered cute.

October 8, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 249885122, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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