Lovely Lesser Kestrel

Hello friends, hope you are doing good, before we start let me thank everyone for reading blogs religiously, your blessings motivate me to find something new every time.

So after back-to-back trip reports let me update you with one lovely bird, which I recently found near Lonavala. Today’s blog is also a type of trip report but it is for only one bird as compared to other trips where we can see countless birds. Let’s go and meet this small bird of prey.

The Small Trip

Trip to Lonavala was just unplanned because it is famous for weekend leisure trip but never thought that it also offers sighting of such a lovely bird known as “Lesser Kestrel.” 

Vishnu got the news that this bird is currently roaming around Lonavala and is a major attraction for the birders. When I got the news I was unable to drive to Lonavala due to a UK trip but on my arrival to Mumbai immediately the next day I requested Vishnu to accompany to visit this place of the special bird. Vishnu as a true friend never says no for birding and photography opportunities. He accepted the request and joined me for Lesser Kestrel capture. This is how we reached the destination without any planning. Here Aarin (Jr. Vishnu) also joined us for birding, Along with Kestrel the real action was little Aarin, it was a treat to see six-year-old champion with such a high enthusiasm towards wildlife at this age.

Sometimes an unplanned trip is much more rewarding then the planned trip, so let's move to the next section to feel the rewards.

Wonderful facts

The lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) is a small falcon. This species breeds from the Mediterranean across Afghanistan and Central Asia, to China and Mongolia 

It is a summer migrant, wintering in Africa and Pakistan, and sometimes even to India and Iraq. It is rare north of its breeding range, and declining in its European range

The genus name derives from Late Latin falx, falcis, a sickle, referencing the claws of the bird, and the species name commemorates the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Naumann

It is a small bird of prey, 27–33 cm (11–13 in) in length with a 63–72 cm (25–28 in) wingspan. It looks very much like the larger common kestrel but has proportionally shorter wings and tail

The male has a grey head and tail like male common kestrels, but lacks the dark spotting on the back, the black malar stripe, and has grey patches in the wings

The female and young birds are slightly paler than their relative, but are so similar that call and structure are better guides than plumage

The morphological similarity with the common kestrel is most puzzling, but still, it appears to betray the present species' actual relationships: the lack of a malar stripe seems ancestral for kestrels, and the grey wing color unites the lesser kestrel with most other Falco species, but not the other true kestrels

The lesser kestrel is, as the name implies, a smaller and more delicate bird than the common kestrel, and it is entirely sympatric in its breeding range with it; they compete to a limited extent

The lesser kestrel eats insects, but also, small birds, reptiles, and rodents (especially mice), which are often taken on the ground

Lesser kestrel would, in fact, have an advantage if some would-be predators confused it with the larger species and consequently avoided it, it might be a case of Müllerian mimicry. Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and that share common predators, have come to mimic each other's honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit

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Learning of the day

State Bird of Chhattisgarh

The common hill myna (Gracula religiosa), sometimes spelled "mynah" and formerly simply known as hill myna or myna bird, is the myna most commonly seen in aviculture, where it is often simply referred to by the latter two names. 

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