On a cloudy afternoon in November, I’m standing in a clearing in the woods near my suburban Austin neighborhood, binoculars pressed to my eyes, scanning the tree line for a colorful, robin-size raptor. My ears are attuned to a shrill “killy-killy-killy” or a rapid “klee-klee-klee” call, though I haven’t heard one yet. Since October I’ve been checking fields and telephone wires—the best places to look for an American kestrel, the smallest falcon in North America and the most common, with large populations migrating here for winter. Texas is one of the best places to see kestrels, which flock to all corners of the state—from the Rio Grande Valley to the Llano Estacado—hunting our grasslands, agricultural fields, and sprawling suburban neighborhoods for insects and small rodents. I fell…
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