Jason Fathers is the Project Officer for the
Chalk and Hawks Projects. He calls on our plantation in
June to check our 2 owl and 2 kestrel nest boxes. In 2006,
due to the dry weather, he only found
an abandoned clutch of kestrel eggs.
2007 was a much wetter year. On 13 June he called again, and found
6 healthy kestrel chicks in their nest box 15 ft up in a dead ash tree.
He ringed these and put them back. Since then I have watched them peer
out of the box, take food from their Mum, fledge,
screech to their parents to be fed from nearby trees, and slowly learn
to hunt for themselves. They have been eating the field voles that eat
my oak saplings, Bless them. It has been an absolute delight to watch
their parents mate on top of a dead tree, the downy chicks appear in the
nest box, the birds fledge, and fly between the mature trees around my
plantation hedgeline. Wildlife programs on TV are all very well, but you
can't beat seeing it happen yourself.
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