Get a Room

Tucson’s winter raptorama is filled with American Kestrels, the most graceful and the most colorful of the continent’s falcons (not for nothing do the Germans call it “Buntfalke”).

The species breeds in our neighborhood, too, occupying saguaro holes abandoned by their Gila Woodpecker authors, and our local pair has been greatly, and somewhat embarrassingly, in evidence recently.

For three evenings in a row, as I’ve rounded that last tight curve on Rudasill Road, I’ve seen the cute little male swoop in to land on the female’s back; tail feathers are quickly shifted out of the way, and nature takes its happy course.

I don’t come home every night at the same time. Wednesday night was latish, yesterday was a bit early, tonight was pretty much right on time. It made me wonder if the sight of a blue Subaru was somehow inspiring, or if the birds were plain and simple exhibitionists. The answer to my wonderings is even more impressive: for each clutch, according to BNA, a kestrel pair engages in 330-690 acts of copulation.

They really are at it all the time! And good luck to them: I await eagerly the appearance of the screechy fledglings in the next 80 days or so.