Cornish Kestrel part 8

Yesterday was a disaster with the Kestrels, The winds, rough seas and a tide times mix-up literally pushed me from my tidal rocky viewpoint in less than an hour,  'The best laid plans of mice and men'  So I came away without a picture taken, the forecast for today looked grim but proved to be drier than expected, so I went off to do battle with nature once again, light levels were good and the strong westerly winds helped to produce some lovely aerial displays from our pair of Kestrel.  Kate in particular showed off her skills at using the up-draughts from the cliffs to put on an amazing show.  In the first image below she is just about to take off after stashing prey,

Due to the up-draughts her graceful take-off required no more than just opening her wings after which she just hung motionless without any wing movement to hover above the stash.

She eventually moved forward still hovering and stopped motionless on the wind above her nest site with a back-drop of Tamerisk for around 30 seconds before making a sharp and graceful turn to streak off along the coastline in just a few seconds. " No effort required !"