Ill Kestrel on Tower Gardens Park Skegness
On one of our daily walks around Skegness, we were going through Tower Gardens Park and a kestrel landed on a bin just 20ft from us, that's highly unusual in itself. We've seen the odd bird of prey fly (kestrel or merlin and a sparrowhawk) through the small park, but they are skittish near humans.
As we approached the kestrel it didn't move, it's tail feathers looked in poor condition and after it flew away (see video) we had another walk around the park and found it sitting on one of the children's activities. We caught it (not filmed), took it home and gave it plenty of worms: not ideal food, but we don't have a supply of dead mice/voles etc... in the freezer!
Plan was to keep it overnight while we found a suitable falconry center to call to look after it, but it went downhill quickly and passed within 12hrs. Might have had a respiratory problem, didn't sound well at times.
Amazing experience to be so close to a wild kestrel, we are really, really gutted it didn't make it :-(
We've found plenty of injured birds over the years including blackbirds, pigeons, dunnock, pigeons, starling, did I mention pigeons: injured ones just turn up on the garden, but a kestrel is a WOW, WOW, WOW it's a kestrel!!!!