Fisher - German Bight

                                               

After a wet weekend at Flamborough, the last of the weather continued into Monday, drenching the fens with constant rain. It was still drizzling on Tuesday morning, and I did not expect much in the way of bird activity to lighten the day. A glance through the window in the back door, therefore, had me overtaken by amazement.

Just three yards away, perched like a garden ornament sat the sullen brown form of a kestrel. Hunting cannot have been easy for it over the last couple of days, so it was perhaps no surprise to see it slumped like this, but for it to be right outside the back door was most unusual. Although I often see kestrels from the garden, this is the first time one has been in the garden itself- so what had drawn it there.

Grabbing my bins for a better look, I noticed its bill seemed to be covered in some kind of I-don't-know-what. Through the scope, it became clear- it was slug.

For the next hour, as the day slowly dried out, the bird, a juvenile female, just sat and moped. Eventually, I decided to risk approach, if only to assess its condition. It allowed me to creep up to a metre away before awkwardly taking a new position on a plastic chair.

The sun came out, and at last the Kestrel moved, retreating to a bramble tangle at the back of the garden.  

The sunshine seemed to give the bird renewed energy, and eventually it started hunting- confirming that it was indeed slug slime that had caked its bill. It loped across the grass and started chewing on them- rather reluctantly it seemed. After each slug, it spent some time digesting while perched in on of the recently pruned plum trees.
I don't know about you, but for me, eating slugs has to be a last resort, so I decided to provide an alternative. I dug up a couple of worms, and chucked them on the grass below the bird.

I wasn't sure it would work, but almost before I could shout "here, Kes, Kes, Kes!", the bird floated down onto the worm and ate, ravenously.
Normally every fork-full of earth in my garden abounds with fat juicy worms- but annoyingly they were hard to come by now as I spent the next few hours trying to make life easier for the falcon.
I went inside as a grey cloud threatened, and started uploading all the photos I had taken. As the skies darkened further, I glanced back out to see if the Kestrel had also taken shelter.
There was no sign.
I picked up the bins and went back outside in the gloom, scanning the plum trees and the larger apple tree.
A sudden movement took me by surprise, as the Kestrel hop-scuttled towards me, only ten feet away. There was a small tree between us, and the kestrel bounced onto its lowest branch, only a foot off the ground. Shifting a nearby flower pot, I found a small worm and gently lobbed it- but it lodged on a dangling twig. Briefly, the worm stretched downward as if reaching out for the earth, before dropping. Kes looked studiously, and then hopped down and calmly swallowed the worm.
Dusk fell and the falcon disappeared, and the next morning there was no sign of it.
Then, there it was again- still after the slugs.
It was weaker now though, and when I approached it in the late afternoon, it couldn't fly with any strength. I found a big box to put it in, and went up to town to get some meat. It took some chicken liver, at first when persuaded with tweezers, but as evening drew on it started to take scraps on it's own.
I left the bird in the box, with a few scraps of meat and the lid uncovered, thinking that if it had the strength it would fly off, and in the meantime there would be food and shelter.
Sadly that night was its last, and whether through stress or hunger it died.

I weighed it at 140 grams. It should have been at least 190, so it is perhaps no surprise that by the time I caught it, it was already past  the point of no return, resigned to the fate of many birds of prey during their first year of life.