We interrupt your regularly scheduled Bird Blog to bring you an important news bulletin. Summer is quite an exciting time for birding because we get so many colourful characters flying in from oversees; many of them expected and some of them not. The bird we’ll be talking about today is an example of the latter, a vagrant who we happened to capture in a moment of luck so radical, that we’ve probably depleted our reserves for the rest of the summer. This month’s bird is the Red-Footed Falcon (Falco vespertinus), a bird so uncommon it doesn’t actually have an Irish name! So we’re proposing that it be known as fabhcún ruachosach in Irish.
Apologies to the bird who was scheduled for this month, we just really wanted to share this rare occurrence with you. You’d think that the fact we’ve only written one other bird blog about an Irish Bird of Prey (IBOP, unofficial acronym) would mean that we write about some of the other, more common species before jumping to a rare vagrant. Perhaps that just goes to show the state of IBOP populations; how difficult it is to find them, let alone snapping a charismatic picture.
But I digress. Here in Ireland we get quite a few birds in the falcon family: kestrels, merlins, peregrines, and the hobby is also becoming increasingly common. (Note: “hobby” is the name of a bird, I’m not talking about birdwatching being on the rise, though with your help it could be!) But who is the red-footed falcon and why is he here? The answer: we don’t know. He’s a vagrant, meaning he was found in a place way outside of his regular range. There’s a few proposed theories as to why this happens. Sometimes birds can tumble outside of their dedicated, migratory flight path by a storm, some other strong weather event, or climate change. Other times it can be more “deliberate”, like when a young, inexperienced bird goes in the wrong direction or flies for too long. (We call these birds spring overshoots.) Occasionally, if a group of vagrants all end up in the same area, they can establish a local population; like magpies, who are believed to have blown over from Wales in 1676.
Ireland is actually well-situated for receiving vagrants. Geographically, we’re the first land a bird encounters when flying over the Atlantic from the Americas, so we’re something of an ideal service station for them to rest and refuel. For birds flying up to continental Europe from Africa, sometimes they can keep going and end up on our south-eastern shores. Cape Clear in Cork and Wexford are generally good hotspots for seeing these befuddled migrants.
However, our red-footed falcon was spotted in neither of those places; he was found just down the road in the East Coast Nature Reserve (ECNR, official acronym) in Wicklow. We bring you now to the scene of the event. It was early in the morning, 09:30 to be precise, after a successful session of shooting a kingfisher. (Article coming soon.) On the walk back from the birdwatching hide, a rare-ish carrion crow was heard, being mobbed by the more numerous hooded crows. While attempting to locate this assault, a bird of prey was spotted hanging out in a tree. He allowed some photos of him to be taken, and remained there while the camera advanced closer and closer. A very chill bird, he was unperturbed by the blue tit next to him, who was puffing out their chest to try and scare him off.
After some time, he flew away. Attempts were made to ID his species — was he a strange kestrel? Afflicted with an odd leucism? He didn’t match any merlin pictures we were privy to either. Dissatisfied, but with no other avenues to explore in that moment, the walk back to the car continued.
But then, a man with two children were encountered, staring up at the same bird in a different tree. After taking some more shots in this new location, the man approached, visibly excited to the point of almost shaking. It turns out this man was Stephen King (no, not that one), member of the Irish Rare Birds Committee. He eagerly shared that the bird was a 2nd year male red-footed falcon, and the first time he had seen it in 16 years! Moreover, he believes that this was the first time a red-footed falcon has been photographed in Wicklow!
Naturally, we were ecstatic. What started out as a great morning became a fantastic day; the high would last all week. Honestly, we’re reliving it now by talking about it here. My personal hope is that it gets us onto Wikipedia somehow, but as it stands, we now carry some clout in the rare bird sighting groupchat.
This wouldn’t be a proper bird blog without some facts about our new friend (the bird, not Stephen King). As you know, the red-footed falcon is a bird of prey. Their diet consists of all sort of creatures; a variety of insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and even other birds. They hunt in the distinctive, Kestrel-style where they hover over a spot, looking for prey, then make a short, steep dive towards their target. I do wonder what he was eating while he was here. We probably aren’t bereft of his preferred foods, especially in the nature reserve, but I personally don’t see many amphibians, reptiles, or small mammals around. Other birds trying to chase him off isn’t an indicator that he was preying on their nests, since birds of prey will get that treatment wherever they go. But I hope that blue tit wasn’t holding a personal grudge.
The word falco is from the late Latin falx; falcis; a sickle. Possibly referencing their curved talons? The name vespertinus is Latin for “of evening”, which could maybe be referring to the male’s lovely, blue-grey feathers that evoke a dusky sky heavy with rainclouds. And his orange “pants” could be the disappearing sun! They were our focus for our proposed Irish name, which is a combination of the words falcon and ginger-footed. Let us know if you think you have a better name.
Female red-footed falcons get no love in the Latin name, but if you were to see one, you’d think she was a kestrel. They have bold dark under-eye makeup and lighter, tawny coloured feathers. I saw one picture of a juvenile red-footed falcon and they really do look quite gothy when they’re young. (If you’d like to see some pictures that aren’t our you can see some on IrishBirds.ie.) Despite the fact that they seem similar to kestrels, their believed closest relative is actually the merlin!
And they also have a link to another bird: rooks. Red-footed falcons don’t build their own nests, they tend to take over old disused nests in rookeries. For a bird of prey, they’re strangely social so the close proximity to one another is ideal, like living in a busy apartment block. Unfortunately, rook populations are declining in Europe, probably due to them being hunted for their perceived status of farmland pest. (Interestingly, red-footed falcons are a farmland boon since their favourite foods are locusts and grasshoppers.) Researchers in Europe have had luck putting up nest boxes for the falcons to nest in so all is not lost, though their numbers are dwindling due to habitat loss and hunting.
You can usually find them in eastern Europe and Asia, and they migrate to Africa to winter south of the Sahara. But flocks of them have been seen together in Ireland on occasion, as part of periodic influxes to the west of Europe from the east. Or, probably more accurately, from Hungary, where a whopping 40% of their population is found.
So there you have it, a first for the bird blog, for us as birdwatchers, and probably for you! We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program of Irish birds with our next post. We hope you enjoyed reading about this fun stranger as we did encountering him. And stay tuned for the article about the bird who got skipped this month, they’ll be diving onto your screens next summer.
The Irish Bird Blog 