5d • General discussion
Kestrel time(s)
Three days ago while sharing the Merlin birding app with my wife Sue, we picked up the call of the American kestrel. I'd predicted they'd show up again this spring as their are numerous potential nest holes to consider in our dead tree swamp behind the house. Sure enough, both a male and female hung out all afternoon, and the male dined on a freshly caught vole.
The first American kestrel I saw flew out of the woods at Elburn Forest Preserve. I was thirteen years old, an eager young birder trying to add species to my life list. The bird swung over a summer cornfield making its "killee killee killee" call, likely to impress a mate, and I eagerly checked the bird's name in my Peterson's Field Guide to the birds. Back then, we called kestrels "sparrow hawks."
Those early birding days were magical, as new species entered my sphere of awareness. Over many decades I've seen hundreds of kestrels, both male and female, across numerous states. Often they show up hunting from roadside telephone wires. They also hover over ditches catching voles as this one did. I've seen them in winter, spring, summer, and fall, as they are year-round residents here in Illinois. I've done numerous paintings of kestrels over the years, including the two shown, one in watercolor (male landing) the other in acrylic paint.
A long time ago, when I was a teenager, I got invited to the home of Robert Van Kampen, the financier who saw my paintings in the Manor Pancake House in St. Charles, IL. He secretly worked as a falconer, and one of his birds was a kestrel, a male as I recall. Van Kampen was an ardent Right-wing evangelical Christian, a creationist and ardent Bible-beater. He'd painted a cross on the breast feathers of his kestrel because the bird's face pattern reminded him of Christian Crusaders.
Even at the time, I thought that was pretty stupid. Now that I've published two books on the history of Christianity and its warped effects on politics, culture, and the environment, I realize that my aversion to his theological instincts back then were spot on. I later worked for the man as a graphic artist in marketing, but they transferred me to Philadelphia, and then closed down the department. But two years later, he hired me to paint two large (48" x 48") paintings of a peregrine falcon for either end of his board room
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Kestrel time(s)
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Birding expert and wildlife artist Christopher Cudworth brings birding to life
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