Bird is the Word: Bird on a wire, the American Kestrel

Vivid photos of the smallest falcon in North America

By Dan Jordan,

Have you heard?  Bird is the word!  Of course, this is a reference to the lyrics of a song from 1963 called Surfin’ Bird, by the Trashmen.  Peter Griffin from Family Guy (Season 7) probably made the lyric more famous than the original with his quirky repetitive rendition of the “Bird, Bird, Bird, Bird is the Word” lyric.  Anyways, in this series of articles, Bird [really is] the Word!

I have become a wildlife photographer in my retirement years.  I travel extensively to find wildlife, but most of my encounters and the resulting images are from right here in our local area. 

In the Third installment of this series, published last week, I shared images and stories from our bird feeder area around our home in Allegany, NY.  This fourth installment is all about a particular species of bird in its natural environment.  I call this one ‘Bird on a Wire’.

I prefer my wildlife images to not contain manmade items, to give the images a more natural look and feel.  That presents a real problem when photographing the American kestrel.  They are most often, if not almost always, spotted on wires.  They hunt for their prey (voles, mice, dragonflies, etc.) from these elevated perches near roads.

When people see my kestrel photos, I often hear, “wow, beautiful bird, I’ve never seen one!”  I bet that is not as true as people would think.  It is actually quite common to see kestrels, but unless one pays close attention, it is easy to mistake kestrels for more common birds, such as mourning doves.

American kestrels are the smallest North American falcons.  They are quite colorful, as the following images reveal.  Unfortunately for wildlife photographers, kestrels are among the most skittish of bird species, even slowing a vehicle down to get a closer look often results in the kestrel flying off.

This first image is a closeup of a male kestrel.  It is the ambassador bird at the Jamestown Audubon facility south of Jamestown, NY. (notice that he is NOT on a wire!).

Sometimes, kestrels will tolerate the presence of a nearby vehicle.  When they do, it is best to act with haste, as their patience with humans is minimal.

The next image is a rare example of a pair of kestrels perched together (yes, on a wire).  While the male is the more colorful of the two, the female (left) is quite colorful in her own right.

Female kestrels have a resemblance to merlins, slightly larger members of the falcon family, except that the female kestrel has blue and cyan color to her head.

Kestrels, like other falcon species, can hover if they are flying into the wind.  This gives them a better chance to locate and capture prey.  It’s tough to capture the essence of hovering in a still photo, but the next image does show a male kestrel as it hovered over a field in Cattaraugus County.  You can see that the kestrel is looking downward toward a potential meal.

The next image shows a rare encounter with a female kestrel perched in a tree.  I could not believe my good fortune when I spotted her!  And she was far enough from the road that my presence did not concern her.  I photographed her for nearly 30 minutes.  Wow, a kestrel ‘not on a wire’ and one that cooperated for a photo session.  Unreal!

Here’s another image of a kestrel hovering, this time a female.

I have many thousands of images of kestrels, however, I think no one has the patience to wade through all of them in a single article.  So, I’ll conclude this with a brief story and one last image.

I was photographing some goats at a farm near my home one winter day last year.  It was in an area where I had often spotted (but never photographed due to the skittish behavior) kestrels on power lines.  As I was firing off shots of the humorous looking goats eating hay, I happened to glance up.  Unbelievably, a male kestrel had landed directly above my Bronco as if to show me its recent catch.  Show me, he did.  I captured a few dozen images of the falcon and its dinner before I drove off.  That’s right, I was the one to depart, not the kestrel.