Ramat Hanadiv and the Lesser Kestrel (Falco naumanni)

Background

The lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) is a small, migrating raptor that reaches Israel in early February, breeds in spring and leaves in early summer. Not much is known about the migration routes of this species; even less is known about the migration routes of the individuals breeding in Israel.

Globally, the state of this species was recently upgraded by the IUCN from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘least concern’ following positive trends in its populations around the world. At the regional and national level, its status was recently upgraded formally from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘near threatened’, following an increase in population size (Meroz et al. 2017).

habit. They fly to other places, where we cannot control what happens. This challenge is all the more difficult for the lesser kestrel, because we do not know where it goes. In an attempt to understand the kestrels’ movements we attached a transmitter to a female lesser kestrel. Unfortunately, we did not receive much data but the little that reached us was surprising. We learned that this lesser kestrel flies to Turkey instead of South Africa, as was previously thought. This doesn’t mean that it overwinters in the north, because we know of many cases of raptors that first fly north and then continue south. Unfortunately we lost track of this female lesser kestrel.

Since we know little about the population and about the survival of chicks in nature in general, and survival of the chicks that reached us and were released, identification of a chick that survived is a very exciting event.