American Kestrel

Its been awhile! Not much has been going on around the farm, but I did see not one, not two, but THREE pairs of Cardinals in our yard over the winter. I was so excited, you don't even know! That is a big deal if you know much about the birds I usually attract here at our stuck-in-the-middle-of-a-corn-field farm.....ie starlings and house sparrows. I have been seeing 1 pair pretty regularly, but I haven't seen them at my feeders. I just put out some safflower yesterday, so we will see if that helps. Maybe they don't like my sunflower seed. Oh and the robins have arrived now so that is nice, gives a little more variety ;-)  I am hoping to get some bluebird nest boxes up very soon so hopefully we can attract some of the little guys. I have seen them, but I have been afraid to put of boxes because of all the starlings we have, I don't want them killing the bluebirds. But I will have to try it and see what happens and do my best to keep the bad birds away.

Now, on to the part about the Kestrel! It wasn't on our farm, but it was while I was sitting in our truck waiting for Jim at Tractor Supply. I spotted this little lovely sitting on the power lines, having a snack. Thank goodness I had my camera! Jim gave me a Nikon P100 with a 26x zoom for Christmas so the first 2 photos are from far away, using that zoom. The last photo was when we were leaving, Jim drove right up to where the Kestrel was sitting and I snapped a few photos from below.

Warning: if you don't like to see birds ripping up little critters, don't look, especially at the last, 3rd, photo. =)