The Common Kestrel

About this book

– We are pleased to announce that The Kestrel has won the 2021 US Wildlife Society’s Book of the Year award, making Richard Sale the first author to have been awarded this prize three times.

It is not many years since most journeys along the UK’s motorway system involved at least one sighting of a small chestnut-coloured bird hanging motionless about the road verges. The bird was the Common Kestrel, its ‘hovering’, now officially called ‘flight-hunting’ to distinguish it from the true hovering of hummingbirds, being a characteristic that separated from the other raptors (birds of prey) that breed in the British Isles.

But times change. The management of motorway verges have made them less attractive as hunting grounds and, more importantly, the population of Kestrels has sharply declined, a decline which continues as the intensification of agriculture and the populations of other raptors increases. The Common Kestrel investigates that decline, after first exploring all aspects of the Kestrels’ life, from plumage and diet through breeding to survival. Data for this investigation were collected from across the Kestrel’s range, but also includes a four-year study in which video cameras were installed to watch breeding behaviour in a barn in southern England. A further study also investigated the flight of the falcons using the modern technology of inertial measurement units and hi-speed photography. Allied to excellent photography, the result is a comprehensive book on this most fascinating of small raptors.
 

Biography

Richard Sale is a physicist with a PhD in astrophysics, who now devotes his time to studying Arctic ecology and the flight dynamics of falcons. He has studied Merlins across the species’ range. With Eugene Potapov he co-authored monograph which won the US Wildlife Society Book of the Year in 2006. More recently he co-authored with Vladimir Masterov and Michael Romanov which won the US Wildlife Society Book of the Year in 2019. His other books include the first field guide to birds and mammals of the Arctic, (again with Eugene Potapov), The Arctic: The Complete Story (recently republished as , with photographs by himself and Norwegian photographer Per Michelsen), and the New Naturalist title .