Dinner is a great first date. Don't believe that stuff about girls not wanting to eat on a first date - sharing a romantic meal is so sexy.— Carmen Electra
Be that as it may, a dinner date for me was certainly exciting..
Ever been so close to a raptor that you almost shared it's dinner?😀
I almost did. This Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) sat their, looking at me with those large cute eyes with almost an askance look...
The "Are you trying to steal my dinner?" look
This was a Sunday in early January. I had heard from one of my friends that raptors, especially Kestrels usually hunted around 3-4 PM. Since I knew the location where a winter migrant Common Kestrel was to be regularly found, I decided to go look if I could see it hunting.
I almost ended up sharing dinner with it!
I arrived at this lake shore which the Kestrel had made it's temporary home for the season, around 4 pm. Sweeping the shoreline with my binos, I found it sitting on one of it's favorite rocks, doing something. The distance was too far off for clicking any shots so I walked hurriedly towards it.
As if it had eyes in the back of it's head, it noticed me though I was being stealthy. Not wanting to share whatever it was doing it descended to ground behind the rock and hid from me.
In that fleeting flight though, I had seen that it was carrying some kind of lark. Ahh - so - it was preparing to eat dinner!
Not wanting to disturb it, I waited patiently and thought that I had missed the chance to capture a picture with a kill.
After I waited for almost 3040 minutes, there was still no sign of the Kestrel. Surely it would have finished it's meal by now? Did it fly away on the other side?.. thought I.
Just out of curiosity, I decided to drop down and crawl around to the other side of the rocks to see if the Kestrel was still there.
As I crawled around and got to the other side of the rocks, I found the Kestrel. Sitting near a small elevation in ground, probably a bush root or something, in very picturesque surroundings. There was a green grass carpet and dainty white grass flowers.
It was looking at me with those large eyes. We stared at each other for a long time and I even clicked the shot I have shown above. I noticed later that a fairly de-feathered bird was lying just out of my frame.
After deciding that I was probably not interested in a 'dinner date' or stealing it's dinner altogether, the Kestrel decided to enjoy it's meal.
It picked up this succulent leg piece and started gobbling down. Unable to resist capturing this savage but beautiful moment, I fired off a burst of shots from my camera. This is one of the shots I got...
Leg piece, anyone?
My shutter burst, however, seemed to annoy the Kestrel. Not the kind of music it liked I suppose. 😀
Jokes apart, I did not want to disturb and deprive the bird of it's meal so I stopped clicking, retreated (by crawling back) to a distance and watched it finish it's meal.
I suppose it was grateful for that because, even after it finished it's meal, it did not fly away. It allowed me to approach and take this beautiful full frame shot.
Hope you enjoyed this account of my dinner date with a raptor...
Information about the bird
Name: Common Kestrel
Scientific name: Falco tinnunculus
Size: Around 30 cm (12 inches)
Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)
Description (based on e-bird, Wikipedia and my observations): It is a bird of prey of belonging to Kestrel group pf the Falconidae family. It is found in Europe, Asia and Africa as well as Northern shores of USA, It mostly feeds on rodents and mice or similar sized small mammals but sometimes catches small birds too. It has a very typical hunting style. It hovers about 30-40 feet above ground and surveys the fields below for rodents. Then it swoops and catches them in it's talons. It has very sharp eyesight and can even see a little ultraviolet spectrum - this helps it detect urine trails of rodents around their burrows! Fascinating!
Information about photograph
- Aperture: F6.3
- ISO: 500
- Shutter: 1/800
- Support: Handheld shot
- Camera: Nikon D500
- Lens: Nikkor 200-500mm
- Image format: Photo clicked in RAW and edited for presentation sizing
A big thank you for support
Thanks to c/hive-106444 (Feathered friends community) for providing this wonderful opportunity to present my experience and photographs. Thanks to @barbara-orenya and @melinda010100 for all the support and encouragement to this community. Special thanks to @nelinoeva also for starting the Species hunt initiative. My posts are not exactly in that format but have all the necessary info and Good original Photos. Further guidance will be very much welcome.
Thanks to HIVE for this wonderful platform. Thanks also to @adalger and @dna.org for encouraging me by recognizing some of my posts as worthy of Densifying nature project.
Further, thanks to Amazing nature community for welcoming me and showing me their love on some of my posts.
Note: All images and collages in this blog are created by me, based on photos clicked by me personally and/or free vector images from Pixabay. Any other sources, if used, are indicated as image credits below the picture.
Quotes used, if not credited, are either from unknown authors or are proverbial old sayings.
