American Kestrel

It was about 5:30 in the afternoon when we got home from running an errand to the pool supply store to have our water tested.  The guy at the store confirmed what I already suspected—our “Total Dissolved Solids” amount was off the charts, and we need to drain the pool and refill it.  We’ve never drained the pool in the four years we’ve had it, so I guess we’ve done quite well, but I’m going to need to hire a pool maintenance company to do the draining for me as I don’t know how.  Hopefully I’ll watch once and get the hang of it, but for now, we’re just trying to keep the algae out of the pool until someone can come over next week to work on it.  At the pool supply place I picked up some packages of chlorine, so when we got home I went out to the pool to start throttling the algae which had cropped up today.

I tossed my shopping bag full of chlorine packs and a pair of scissors on a deck chair, and then I did a double-take because just a few inches away from me, sitting casually on the pool deck, was an American kestrel.  I thought he might be sick or injured because he was so calm, but when I got down on my knees to get a better look, he decided to jump up on our back wall.  I ran inside and asked Flippy to quickly bring down her camera so I could take a photo, although I knew there was a good chance the bird would fly away before I got back outside.  With camera in hand I went back near the pool and he was still there, sitting casually on the fence as another bird screeched at him and dive-bombed his head in protest.  There were two house finches in the nearby tree also yelling at him, which surprised me a bit because if I was a finch, I think I would just run and hide.  In any case, I was able to take a picture, although the lighting isn’t great because the sun is setting:

image

I took about four photos, each one closer than the last, but by the time I got close enough to use the “macro” setting, the kestrel had tired of my paparazzi nonsense and he flew off.  I know they eat grasshoppers, and I’ve just started noticing grasshoppers in our yard over the past 48 hours or so, and maybe that’s what brought him around.  He’d probably be able to grab a few just by sitting next to the pool and waiting for them to pass by.  I’d be quite happy if he’d like to stay nearby and eat some roaches—I’m so sick of roaches, I’ll even pay him a salary if he could rid our yard of just a few of those creepy things.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 06/06 at 06:11 PM

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  1. Oh my goodness, that’s so cool! Birds are such neat creatures. It’s amazing that you were able to get that close! (The publisher I work for did a bird book last year, and since then I’ve found myself paying more attention to the feathered critters around us.)

    Posted by Helena  on  06/07  at  03:48 AM

  2. What a fabulous picture!

    Posted by Helly  on  06/09  at  06:40 AM

  3. What a wonder.. to find such a beautiful visitor and be able to capture him on film. I had a similar experience today. Only my visitor was a lovely monarch butterfly on my Lilac bush.  I rushed inside to retrieve my camera and was able to get a couple of photos before he drifted off.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  06/12  at  04:59 PM

  4. I look forward to seeing your photo on your blog, Coll.  We don’t seem to have many butterflies around here, and I miss them from when I lived in Canada.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  06/12  at  08:56 PM

  5. Hi Leigh-Ann.  I just posted the photo of the butterfly this morning.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  06/13  at  07:53 AM
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