Nestling Kestrel

   Young raptors that are turned in for rehabilitation require a unique system that allows the youngster to identfy with its own species, learn the correct language and behavior, and learn to hunt the typical prey species of its kind.  It will need to know its enemies and fear them.  Often the most likely enemy is humans, which poses an interesting problem when raising a young bird to be wild. 

Here, she has her head tucked under her wing and is sleeping.

   This kestrel was entirely covered with white down feathers when she arrived.  She was fed inside a nest box by a puppet of a female kestrel until fledgling age.

She still has a few down feathers, and is ready to fledge.

   She spent the last two weeks of her nestling stage housed in a nest box beside a foster parent.  This adult female foster parent was then released into the same large outdoor pen so that the two kestrels could freely socialize with each other.  They are fed through a small feeding flap that prevents them from associating people with food.
   Once they have adjusted to living together, they are placed in a flight cage at least fifty feet in length, and provided with a variety of live prey.  Crickets, grasshoppers, mealworms, and beetles are the mainstay of the young kestrels diet.  She quickly learned to watch for movement near logs and brush piles inside the flight cage.  After she became skilled at hunting insects, live mice were introduced.  Within a day, she was hunting mice.

   This kestrel was released in August, when grasshoppers were abundant.  She was turned out into an open field near a pond in mid-day on a sunny afternoon.