Hawks From Handsaws

Countryside Column for 8 November 2013

Telling Hawks From Handsaws or Pigeons

A kestrel died on my doorstep the other day. I thought it was a pigeon (I am, self evidently, not much of an ornithologist), and I couldn’t work out what it was doing there. At first I blamed the dog. She’d been acting oddly ever since the clotheshorse collapsed on her in front of the Aga the previous day. She clearly thought it was her fault and that I was cross: she ran upstairs with her tail between her legs and stayed there all night, which is extremely unusual. Anyway I couldn’t really leave it – the pigeon/hawk that is - to decompose just where visitors would have to step over it. So out came the rubber gloves (am I alone in being a bit squeamish about picking up dead animals with bare hands?) and I scooped up the corpse. 

Now, however pathetic I am at identifying bird species, even I realised what I was holding was probably not a dead pigeon. To start with, it had wonderful brown feathers with black squares or diamonds on its back, long tail feathers and yellow legs with talons. But the real giveaway seemed to be a small but sharply hooked beak. A quick internet search confirmed it was, or had been, a common kestrel.

It was in almost perfect condition. No rigor mortis or sign of any wound. But its head lolled around, so I could only conclude it had a broken neck. It was all rather sad. I love watching hawks hovering or gliding round and round on the thermal currents. We’ve had a family of buzzards living next to the orchard recently, soaring and circling majestically over the trees and mewing like cats. 

But is a kestrel actually a hawk? What would we do without Google? The answer is, technically, no. A kestrel is a falcon which is a different genus, though both are classed at raptors along with eagles and owls and even vultures. The main difference is that falcons tend to catch their prey in flight, while the others dive bomb them on the ground. Except vultures who, being lazy birds, wait for them to die first. 

What I also discovered is that kestrels can get up to amazing speeds in order to overtake their prey. If mine hit the door at his top velocity of 200 mph, it’s no wonder he broke his neck.