Cornish Kestrel part 14

     As I walked down through the coastal fields this morning I could see Kate our female Kestrel long before I arrived,  She was using the cliff face updraught to hang on the wing for some energy saving  hunting in a light southerly wind.

I went down through the cliffs to a lower level to gain some shelter and worked my way to one of my preferred viewing points and Kate came down and perched close by,  I thought she was just being sociable until I realised that she was not watching me but a busy little Rock pipit hunting for insects among washed up kelp snipes on the shore,

It is quite rare to see many small birds in this area and also to see the local kestrels predating on them  when vole, lizard and slow worms are in such abundance  I could also tell by the blood stain on Kate's chest that she had already eaten very recently but I guess there is no harm in stashing more prey for later,  she decided against it and I enjoyed watching the delicate feeding habits of the Rock pipit for a while,

Kate settled for a bit of a wash and brush-up until a couple of low flying local Buzzard circled effortlessly around the cove several times with Kate watching their every move,

One moved on along the coast but the other decided to go around one more circuit which was obviously one to many for Kate and up she went to harass it out of her patch,  The buzzard had seen it all before but grudgingly decided to move on with its mate.

I have been getting a bit frustrated at missing possible images of the interactions of our two kestrels at times of prey handover and mating,  Even yesterday My wife and I witnessed a noisy prey hand over while working on another project in the same area so I checked my records for the last couple of years and it seems to be that around four weeks of waiting to be in the right place at the right time is par for the coarse to capture these somewhat spontaneous activities.  I guess only time will tell !