Nanven' s crazy Kestrel

Being a crazy runaway Kestrel chick is one thing but when your nest site is forty foot up a vertical crumbling cliff it is suicidal.

This chick had managed to get fifty metres along the cliff face in a few hours without any regards for the loss of the safety of its nest site or its high risk of falling.

Getting hungry now it suddenly realised that its calls for food to the returning female kestrel were ignored with all of her prey going into the chicks on the nest

When I left Nanven at 4 pm I was unhappy about this chicks behaviour and its chances of survival so  after making two calls for advice when I arrived home,  a couple of hours later I put some rescue equipment together and returned to the site to see how things were progressing and it looked as though against the odds the chick had almost made it back to the nest.

But this crazy Kestrel had other ideas and went straight passed the nest and worked its way slipping and sliding up to the sixty foot level that had wider cracks and gaps than this bird could manage and the inevitable happened with the chick making a tumbling vertical fall down to the beach level.

The time for rescue had arrived and with a little slipping and sliding of my own I eventually had this unharmed and surprisingly relaxed chick caged in my cat basket ready for a nights B+B with me and a trip off to a local rescue centre early in the morning.

Bed consisted of a small blanket added into the cat basket and it willingly accepted a hand fed breakfast of cold meats before setting off on its next new and hopefully safer adventure.