Description: The American Kestrel is the smallest and most colorful of North American Falconifomes. Males have a rust back with some black bars, a rust tail and bluish-gray wings; females are brown, barred with black on black and tail, and buff with brownish streaks underneath. Kestrels, commonly called sparrow hawks, are unique in that they are the only North American falcon or hawk to nest in cavities--not only in natural cavities and woodpecker holes but in the eaves of buildings and barns and in nest boxes as well.

Range/Habitat: They breed from Alaska and Northwest Territories east through the Maritime Provinces and south throughout the continent. Winters north to British Columbia, Great Lakes, ad New England. Also into American tropics. Habitat is mostly farmland, suburban and urban areas.

Adaptations: Kestrels typically hunt from a conspicuous perch or hover like miniature helicopters. The flight is buoyant, graceful and rapid, quite-like a large swallow.

Courtship/Gestation/Birth: Nesting usually begins in mid-March, and a clutch of four to six eggs is laid in early April. The female does most of the incubating for 28 to 30 days, while the male hunts for her. Young kestrels fledge from the nest after 28 to 30 days.

Diet: Mammals including bats, mice, shrews, rats, gophers, young ground squirrels and young cottontails (70%); birds, mainly house sparrows (10%); invertebrates including worms, crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, dragonflies and butterflies (20%); reptiles and amphibians (1%).

Card by Henson Robinson Zoo Education Department.

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