One day, on March or April 1995, I found a brownish-spotted egg
in the cactus-pot on my window (on the 13-th floor). It turned out
(with a couple of other eggs that were added in the next few days) to
belong to
a pair of falcons (kestrels, to be more accurate) that liked my cactus,
and decided to use its pot as a nest. I closed the shutter
almost completely, in order not to frighten the mother.
And indeed she stayed there, set on the eggs until the chicks hatched, while the male provided the food (mostly small lizards and birds). Then she set on the young chicks until they grew up, and she could leave the nest for longer and longer periods, and hunt for pray herself.
This is when I opened the shutter so we could see the chicks and take some photographs of them. At first they have this cute white down. Then the feathers start to grow underneath the down until it completely disappears, and they look like a female. But the chicks are not ready to fly yet. They can only flip their wings in a practice, or just sit on the edge. When they are ready, their mother seems to stop deliver the food, until the oldest (or maybe the bravest) chick takes courage to leave the nest, and pray for food for himself, and even for his siblings - even if it is just a spider.
The next year they appeared again. This time laying 5 eggs. Lots of dirt to clean after, but also a lot of fun. On the third year they didn't arrive for some reason. Maybe the cactus on which they liked to stand grew too much, or they found a better pot in the building. However, on May there was again one egg in the pot. The female was again very shy and scared. However, the male (which is a little smaller then the female and have smaller dots on a redish-brown background) didn't seem to mind my presence, and even was happy to pose for the camera (see the picture above). Maybe he was one of the chicks from the previous years. Maybe I frightened the female too much, or maybe just because the nesting season was over - they deserted the egg and my pot. There are still a lot of kestrels in the building, nesting, sitting, and sleeping. But not on my window.
I can still watch kestrels nesting in the university. But only from some 20 meters apart, and with binoculars. It is nice but not as exciting. But I will never forget this experience, and every time I hear this voice, I can't help raising my eyes and looking for the beautiful bird hovering above, or standing and looking curiously around.
In addition to the Common Kestrel (Baz Matzui) which is very common, we also have in Israel the quite rare and endangered Lesser Kestrel (Baz Adom). They nest in very few places in Israel, including the Musrara neighbourhood in Jerusalem, where they used to nest in the tiles-roofs of old-styled houses. But when those houses were modernized the kestrels were left with no place to nest, so a nesting-boxes project was started. This project has evolved into an educational project, that included Jewish children from Jerusalem, and Palestinian children from Jericho where the lesser kestrels nest too. This project won the 1999 Time Magazine's "Heroes of the Planet" award.
