Eurasian Kestrel - Netherlands / Beleef de Lente

[birdcamfan]

They have been spending a lot of time there. Things are looking very positive.

[bev.]

A couple of nice videos of Kestrels on april11

[allikat]

Good news!
Perhaps this will be it for drama at the nestbox and it will be a happy ending!

[birdcamfan]

One of the Kistrals is sitting at the entrance of the nest box preening right now. Looks like s(he) is guarding the entrance!

[allikat]

Good news that the kestrels have perhaps regained this nest.  Haven't been on that part of the site because I didn't want to see any more battles.  I wonder what's going to happen with all of that mess inside (unless it's gone?) 

[maggieblue]

Some good news here.  The updates from the past two days indicate that the kestels appear to have regained their nest.  I really didn't think that this was going to happen a few days ago. First the doves were spending a lot of time in there with the jackdaws visiting.  At one point the doves were terrified and glued to the opposite wall while the jackdaw guarded the entrance.  Then the doves didn't seem to be around but the jackdaws were there a lot together.  During this time I saw the kestrels making appearances on the outside but they appeared to be too nervous to go inside. I guess their persistence paid off.  Let's hope that this is the end of the drama.

[birdcamfan]

The kestrels have been hanging about the nest box recently and there is a clip from this morning with some "falcon love" so they may end up using this nest box. The crows haven't really been a presence here as much since the big scrum last weekend. Still hard to know who will end up "owning" this nest box.

[irenekl]

Thanks for the help everyone, I'm hitting all your links to the info on kestrel's, etc.  Terriffic stuff.  I've been doing the translating thing at yahoo and "towering falcon" i guess was what was confirming that idea for me.  Was out at Oak Hammock today (freezing) and noticed a European bird book there but didn't think to look at the kestrel in there.  It seems I "want" it to be a falcon.  Funny.

[The Peregrine Chick]

BirdCamFan - excellent suggestion!!  I'm going to try to find a way to incorporate that on our foreign language cams so folks know what their options are.

If anyone else has ideas like this related to peregrine (or torenvalk) cams, send me a pm!

The Peregrine Chick

[allikat]

Hey...great idea!!!

[birdcamfan]

The translation of Torenvalk is kind of cute "towering falcon". If anyone wants to translate the Dutch comments on the site, just google Dutch to English translation and cut and paste the comments into the translator. The translations come out to be rather entertaining but you get the gist of what is being discussed

[The Peregrine Chick]

If you are looking for Common Kestrel in your bird books, they need to be European bird books, they aren't here in North America.  The NA version is the smaller American Kestrel, similar in lots of ways though.  I gave a link to the Wikipedia site on an earlier post and the information there is really very good.

[maggieblue]

Irenkl you have probably already read TPC's post about the differences between the European and North American Kestrels.
I hope that the following link works as I am trying to post the translated page from the Italian cams forum that has pictures that identify their female and male Kestrels, Rebecca and Nembo.  The male is paler and larger. Hope this helps.
 
http://translate.google.ca/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.birdcam.it%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ft%3D3899%26postdays%3D0%26postorder%3Dasc%26start%3D15&sl=it&tl=en

p.s. Rebecca just laid her first egg today 

[eagle63_1999]

It's an European Kestrel and if my memory serves me correctly Tracy did say that they are bigger than our Kestrels.

[irenekl]

Oh man, look how long that took me!  I thought I could get here from the opening page of the Forum.  (don't ask)   Anyway, thank you so much.  I'm here now and got it through a much more civilized way with your help.

back to my falcon identification issue.  I'll have to see them all again and snap a picture.