Suburban Pantheist

[ritaxis]

Kestrels!! (or, as we used to call them, sparrow hawks)

I don't know if I've mentioned the kestrel that hangs out on the flat part of Calabasas Road -- well into the agricultural part past the elementary school, before the road rises and gets twisty. If you're around here, you can look for the horse paddock: there's almost always a kestrel hanging out on the wire, looking over the paddock. Once it stooped on some unfortunate rodent right in front of me as I drove home, but of course I didn't get a photo of that. I could have died trying, but I'm not that dedicated, so I didn't.

What I didn't know until today -- maybe it wasn't even so before -- is that there's a pair of kestrels, not just one, or at least sometimes there is, or maybe there just was today. I actually spotted one kestrel on the wire, thought the conditions were good for pulling over and trying to shoot it -- I'd gotten a couple of lousy shots in the past -- but not until I had to do a couple of Y-turns to end up in the right spot again. And by the time I got back near the bird, there were two. I parked a bit away from them because I thought parking right under them might spook them, and I started taking pictures and moving forward, my policy with birds because they will fly away eventually and bad pictures might be better than no pictures. I only got one before they wheeled away. They looked like they were going to come back to the wire, but one flew off into the apple orchard and the other went and sulked on the fence at the far side of the paddock.

It's not National Geographic quality, but it's the almost best picture of a bird of prey that I've ever gotten:

Comments

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

oh, how cool!

[armb.livejournal.com]

> Kestrels!! (or, as we used to call them, sparrow hawks)

In British English, sparrowhawks (http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/sparrowhawk.htm) (or here) (http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/s/sparrowhawk/index.asp) and kestrels (http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/kestrel.htm) (or here) (http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/k/kestrel/index.asp) are both still called that, but are different birds. Is that different in American?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

What happened, if I understand this correctly, is that our North American bird had its name changed about twenty years ago to match the bird that is called that in Europe. Or maybe it was the peregrine that had its name changed. Certainly your kestrel looks more like our kestrel than the sparrowhawk does.

I remember my brother in law the birder talking about the name change and thinking that it was silly to groom the common names of things like that, because when you want to be really precise you use the latin names anyway, don't you?

Now I'm doubtful as to which bird had its name changed and uncertain how to google it.