Do Kestrels cache food? (1 Viewer)

[Farnboro John]

I ended up at Porthgwarra yesterday after seeing the Alder Flycatcher and changing my mind about looking for a mythical Yellow-throated Vireo in a traffic jam.

A juvenile Kestrel caught a vole and carried it to open turf on the cliff slope, where it stumped around with it for a while, decided not to eat it (it bent to it several times but never used its beak on it) and shoved it under the edge of a clump of grass.

It stood still for a minute or two then flew off out of sight, at which point I zipped down to where it had been and recovered what turned out to be a smallish Bank Vole (reddish back, bi-coloured tail). A bunch of us had a good look at it, couldn't find any obvious punctures but we weren't quite CSI in our PM I suppose.

In case the bird planned to return I put the vole back where the Kestrel had left it.

Anyone heard of Kestrels caching food before?

John

 

[a_hnau]

Not seen it myself, but various Internet sites seem to suggest this is normal for these birds.

On a different topic, our magpies seem to regularly cache nearly as much as they eat - I pity the poor householder who goes to have some repair work done on his eaves and discovers several dozen beakfuls of rather ripe suet pellets

 

[fugl]

I don't know about European Kestrels, but the American species does so at least occasionally. On a cold December day a couple of winters ago I saw a female kestrel retrieve a headless vole from the top of a conifer and carry it off to another tree where it started eating it. The carcass must have been cached over night as there was frost on its fur.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=one_set72157602221155793

 

[Martin Thomas]

From Rijnsdorp et al. 1981. Hunting in the kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, and the adaptive significance of daily habits (here)

"Meal frequencies culminated shortly before nightfall except in incubating females. The difference between the daily distributions of hunting and eating was due to some of the prey being cached in daytime and retrieved around dusk ..... Caching behaviour is interpreted as a circadian strategy allowing separate optimization of hunting-adjusted to prey availability-and eating-adaptive by retaining minimum body weight in daytime flight and by thermo-regulatory savings at night. "

 

[PennineBirder]

From Rijnsdorp et al. 1981. Hunting in the kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, and the adaptive significance of daily habits (here)

"Meal frequencies culminated shortly before nightfall except in incubating females. The difference between the daily distributions of hunting and eating was due to some of the prey being cached in daytime and retrieved around dusk ..... Caching behaviour is interpreted as a circadian strategy allowing separate optimization of hunting-adjusted to prey availability-and eating-adaptive by retaining minimum body weight in daytime flight and by thermo-regulatory savings at night. "

The campaign for plain English should be called in to investigate this quotation and the perpetrator arrested. . . . . . .!

Anyhow Kestrels certainly cache food - I have seen it done personally on several occasions and there is an extensive literature on the matter. Possibly slightly more surprising is the fact that Peregrines cache food too (well surprising to me anyway as Kestrels are ground hunting birds and spend quite a lot of time on the ground whereas Peregrines are rather more of an aerial species).

Cheers

Peter

 

[Words]

Not always

 

[Martin Thomas]

The campaign for plain English should be called in to investigate this quotation and the perpetrator arrested. . . . . . .!

<snip>

Cheers

Peter

I'm afraid it's just one of the joys of peer reviewed scientific literature...