Sleeping Kestrel

[Joanne C. Haller]

Another instance  --

 

               Close to 40 years ago we had an American Kestrel spend a sub-zero night sleeping on top of the light fixture on our front porch.  It had only a 50 Watt bulb in it so the heat from that must have been just right.  Our son saw it there when he came home and went around to the back door so as not to disturb it.

 

Joanne Haller

Westminster

[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Joanne's interesting story is similar to what I have heard on more than one occasion regarding Greater Roadrunners spending the night atop security lights in farmyards in southeastern CO in winter.   Pertaining to that roadrunner a few winters back on the Dinosaur Hogback near Red Rocks, Joe Roller, Joey Kellner, and I wondered out loud where that bird could be spending the night (and supplementing what appeared to be a rather sparse food supply on the hogback).  One of our suspicions was the small farm down below with a barn and a few livestock just north of Red Rocks and west of the highway.

Finally, once during a winter birding adventure back in the 1970s my buddy Mike Schomaker and I spend the night in his VW Microbus in a campground near Falcon Dam in south TX.  I vividly remember peering out the window at first light to see a roadrunner sitting atop our campsite's bbq grill, which must had had a few smoldering charcoal briquettes in it.  The bird looked all the world like a chicken incubating said heat source.

Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins

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From: jcha...@q.com
To: cob...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cobirds] Sleeping Kestrel
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 09:27:55 -0700

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[Indra]

Some friends outside Erie (Boulder County) had a female kestrel roost on their front porch for about eight months.  The porch was covered, with support columns in the corners, and a small space above the columns where the angle of the roof sloped up above.  She would come in at dusk and sleep sitting on top of the column, well protected from weather and predators.  They would not use the front door after dark so as not to disturb her, and if you looked out the window to the porch from inside, without moving too much, you could see her from fairly close up.  They said she stopped coming after about eight months, and never returned.  It was a real treat to watch a kestrel so close.  It was a pretty new development with not a lot of native vegetation around.  -Elena K

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