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Worth the Wet
December 26th was lovely, filled with heavy wind and rain. You can guess how I spent the day.
The wind complicated matters a bit, even shooting from the car as I was, as it kept blowing rain onto the front element of the lens and I had to stop to clean it every few minutes (or even seconds). I had towels draped over the entire section around the drivers seat, I was wearing a rain coat, and had another coat draped over my legs to keep them from getting soaked. Everything on the passenger's seat was either in bags or covered up. But oh was it worth it! Kestrels are commonly seen at Ridgefield in the winter but they are skittish and always take off before you can get close. Nearly always that is, for this male and another halfway round the refuge let me photograph them up close. Once I learned their favorite haunts, I kept an eye out for them and was blessed to be able to watch them up close like this several different times, sometimes hunting and eating, sometimes just waiting in the rain. |
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Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign
The best place to watch for kestrels at Ridgefield is on the signs that dot the edges of the large meadows at the end of the auto tour. There aren't any natural perches on that side of the road, so the kestrels use the metal posts as their vantage point for watching mice moving about in the fields.
Or for regaling visitors with wild stories from their youth. |
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Falco
There are a handful of true falcons that typically breed in North America, all belonging to the genus Falco, with the smallest being the American kestrel (falco sparverius). The kestrels at Ridgefield are pretty wary and often won't stay perched if you pass on the auto tour, and probably for good reason, as there are a number of other birds of prey that share these hunting grounds that dwarf the little falcons in size. This lovely female was a ways off the road and stayed still for a few pictures before she took to the skies again to resume the hunt.
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Not For the Squeamish
Rodents play a crucial role in the foodchain for many predators at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. The Townsend’s vole is a food source for a variety of predators, including herons, egrets, hawks, owls, and coyotes. Kestrels are much smaller than most hawks and all eagles, and this female has caught something much smaller than a vole: a mouse. There are two species of mice at Ridgefield, the deer mouse and the Pacific jumping mouse, and I’m not sure which one this is.
Was. Which one this was. |
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Featherweight
Even though the weight of the kestrel bends the branch downward, what is remarkable is that a bird of this size can perch at the end of such a thin branch at all — a true testament to the lightweight structure many birds have evolved.
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