We would like to express our thanks to Frank Hindmarch for taking the time and trouble to contact Raptor Politics with details of his unusual discovery. Frank and his wife while out walking came across two active kestrel nests just 50m appart containing young . We have published two images which show the four young almost fledged from one of the nests captured by Frank together with a short summary detailing how he came across both nests.
“My wife, dog & I were walking on a local beach on the NE coast, locally called the ‘Blast Beach’, there used to be blast furnaces on the cliff top many, many years ago and latterly achieved mild celebrity in the opening scenes of the film Aliens III, more importantly these days, it’s National Trust & an SSSI …
Well, we heard an almighty commotion up on the cliff face and guess what, TWO Kestrel nesting sites within 50m of each other, one I had no chance of getting to unless I too could sprout wings, but, one was possible if I perched precariously on the cliff top … so I did, and here’s the results!”
Footnote:
If any of our readers have similar observations or interesting tails to tell about raptors, please don’t hold them back send them into Raptor Politics on the “Contact Us” link. If you have any images all the better, jpgs will be most suitable.
Know the area well having walked 2 miles on crutches after a Desert Wheatear in January and missed it!
Excellent discovery and nice images Frank. This is a reasonably common finding with this raptor in times of a plentiful food supply.
I get the impression that this raptor in some parts of the country has had a reasonable successful breeding season despite the poor weather, etc.
In comparison our smallest raptor the Merlin which breeds mainly on the ground in mature heather hasen’t faired so well.
Mainly on the ground due to mismanagement. The world range is more tree and crag nesting.Work in the North east showed a bigger brood size for Merlin if they tree nested compared to ground nesting.
Not all the same species but when I lived in a hill farm up in the Galloway hills I had a Barn Owl nesting in the barn, a Tawny nesting in a box about 100 mtrs away, a Kestrel nest in a pine 80 mtrs from the Tawny and a Short Eared 500mtrs out on the hill. I also had a Black grouse lek 80 mtrs from my backdoor and no gamekeepers within 5 mile so they all got on fine !
What would be cool to investigate is if this is two pairs or two females and a polygynous male?
Nice idea Jimmi, unfortunately one of the things that initially alerted me was the spectacular dogfight that went on between the four adults.
Very interesting, This year I have observed 2 neighboring peregrine territories raise young successfully with an “extra” adult, possibly the same bird at both acting as a helper. No aggression towards it from either resident pair.
Nature always throws up surprises…unfortunately no breeding hen harriers though!!!
Editor’s Comment, Thanks Seb for this information. We recall in one Lakeland valley in the early 1980′s, there were two pairs of breeding peregrines nesting just a half mile apart without any problems. We put this down to the high volume of racing pigeons passing up the valley on almost a daily basis.