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Rivals forget power struggle for one astonishing moment
Natural instincts tend to be utterly reliable. But every so often, they can drive us to do the most astonishing things.
Take the kestrel that I watched feed its greatest rival the other day, driven by the competitor's urgent, chick-like call.
I started watching these kestrels from my kitchen window in 2006 and have come to know them well.
The window looks straight out on to the Yorkshire Wolds, giving me the perfect advantage of a "bird's eye" view of the wildlife that abounds there.
In order to make the most of this, I have turned the house into a gigantic (and most comfortable) hide.
I've customised a lot of the windows with tripod supports, peepholes and infra-red cameras. Designer-decor it is not, but it certainly makes for fascinating viewing and an interesting way of life.
The large window from the kitchen is my favourite lookout post, and many a painting has come from photographs taken from here.
Some sightings come and go with the seasons, others are pure one-offs and some are garnered from several months or even years of careful planning and preparation.
I saw the first of these two kestrels three years ago when it was hunting over a rough patch of grass at the bottom of my garden. I was lucky enough to see him catch a shrew and a vole.
It was October and the weather was getting worse each day. You could see he was getting hungrier and hungrier.
So I put a post in the grass, in sight of the kitchen, for him to perch on and hunt off. The next day, I caught a mouse in a trap and put it out on the post to help him on his way.
The mouse disappeared almost straightaway, so did another mouse the following day and then another on the next.
The kestrel soon became a regular visitor, sometimes coming four or five times a day. Unable to catch enough mice for him, I also began feeding him day-old chicken chicks. These cockerels are the waste product of our egg- laying industry.
I also fed him road kill, rabbit and pheasant. Unimaginatively, I called him Kes.
I was delighted when he came with a girlfriend the following spring. They nested three fields away to the south of Fotherdale.
When I had to go abroad on wildlife expeditions, Jayne, who works here at the gallery, fed him for me. She wasn't sure about handling dead mice and chicks at first, but she's since decided she's happy doing it as long as she has her Marigolds on.
Although Kes was a wild bird I became increasingly attached to him and in time I could whistle for him while I was putting out a mouse and before I had got back into the house he would have swooped down and have swiped it away.
This became a problem from a photographic perspective. It was remedied after I cable-tied the food to the post, which meant he had to eat and pose for the camera at the same time.
Until 2008 Kes had been coming virtually every day for two years. Then, abruptly, he stopped. He was greatly missed. I was especially disappointed as all this time I had been waiting for his adult plumage to come through, when he would become a truly superb painting model.
A few months passed, but after no sign of him I decided to use some of my newly-learned tricks to try and attract a new kestrel.
I saw one flying about in the valley below my house and before too long it was spending an increasing amount of time around our house, hunting in the long grass.
Sometimes it would perch on telegraph poles on the other side of the road to the house, so I started to put down fresh mice and roadkill on a log on the dale side, underneath the poles.
But nothing was happening to the food. Just as I was about to give up, the food began to disappear. But because the log was out of sight, I couldn't be sure who was eating it. Gradually I moved the log closer to the house, hoping that I wasn't drawing in rats, until I got the feeding log to the boundary of my garden, some 35 metres from the kitchen window.
And then, at last, I saw the mystery diner – a beautiful male kestrel in full adult plumage. Brilliant, I'd got myself a new model – "Kes 2".
A few days later another kestrel arrived, a young male, possibly Kes 2's young. But Kes 2 gave him short shrift and I did not see this young pretender again.
The winter of 2008-9 was a hard one up on the Wolds, with snow on the ground for weeks and Kes 2 appreciated his free meals. I moved his feeding station nine metres from my kitchen window and started to get some great shots.
Then, one snowy day in February, another kestrel came on the scene. I presumed it was Kes 2's mate. As I reached for my binoculars to take a closer look, it swooped onto the feeding station – and I knew by its mannerisms that this was in fact my original Kes.
He was back. And was he annoyed? Kestrels are highly territorial and for a few weeks these two kestrels battled. But neither would back down and give up the valuable feeding station.
The weather was becoming milder by now and the landscape was starting to thaw, which eased their intolerance of each other. After all, I was putting out enough food for both of them.
But at the beginning of June, their respective families were being raised and tensions rose again. Fights broke out over the feeding station.
Kes 1 is a younger bird not yet in his adult plumage, but always the most vocal, screeching and flapping
his wings. It's an unusual sight, it's almost as if he is being submissive but at the same time he pushes Kes 2 off the log.
But then I witnessed one of the most astonishing things. During one of these tussles for power, Kes 1 was screaming and shouting at Kes 2, the older of the two, and in response Kes 2 actually fed Kes 1.
Just after he presented
him the food, Kes 2 realised his error and tried pushing him off the log as if to say "drat and damnation, what did I do that for?"
This is extremely rare behaviour. I've heard stories of small birds feeding another species' chicks drawn in by their begging
for food, as if by some primeval force. But I have never heard of birds of prey doing this and definitely not two male adults feeding each other.
Interestingly, both males have never brought their mate to the feeding
station.
Maybe they want to keep their easy food supply secret and make them think they are working hard for the food they provide.
I can't wait to see what happens next. The chicks will be fledging any day now and perhaps they might follow their dads to my bird table with a difference.
www.robertEFuller.com
http://robertefuller. blogspot.com
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
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Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
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