This American Kestrel is part a member of a nature center I used to work at, which takes care of nonreleasable birds of prey and reptiles. These animals were designated as nonreleasable either as a result of injury or due to being taken in from the wild (usually intended as pets) and becoming accustomed to humans (therefore unable to hunt on their own).

At a nature center as a park naturalist, I came across this little kestrel and was immediately drawn to him. He was injured as a juvenile years ago in a logging accident, and he is missing half of his wing. He was brought to a wildlife rehabilitation facility following his injury, but unfortunately as a result of missing half of his wing, he was unable to be rereleased. He would be unable to survive in the wild, due to the fact that American Kestrels use the full capacity of their wings hover over their prey before catching them. The wildlife rehabilitation facility he was looking for a place to rehouse him, and he came to the nature center as part of a state program that seeks to educate children and adults alike about the importance of environmental stewardship. I was a park naturalist at the time of filming this video and had dual responsibilities in animal caretaking and environmental education.

During my time at the park, I became very interested in learning more about enrichment opportunities. Very little has been researched on enrichment opportunities for birds of prey. I read Temple Grandin’s fascinating books on enrichment and established an enrichment program. I put up this video in hopes that if other nature centers and facilities that house these birds come across similar behavioral issues, they can perhaps use the information I gathered from my experience to benefit both caretakers and the housed birds. I found that there should certainly be more of a forum on this topic on the internet, so hopefully this helps some nature centers out there. Let me know if you have an questions! (The account has been inactive for awhile oops!) I'll try my best to answer :)

In short, this bird was exhibiting repetitive and abnormal behavior when I first arrived. However, I then started taking him on walks and working with him, and now he's a changed bird if you hold out your glove to him, he'll hop right on now, and no longer exhibits signs of stress, in or out of his mew although, truth be told, he's not a fan of dogs in the park and will "killy" at them if he sees them.

Here, I explain process of enrichment, and I introduce the little guy to youtube :)


PS: Thank you to all those who have commented I realized through your comments that the description wasn't very descriptive before, so hopefully this new one helps clarify things :)