If only the leaves from the buddlia we're not in the way this would be a better photo.
At work, as you will have gathered, I feed the birds. The problem is bird food attracts rats. It's not necessarily all bad as they are quite fun to photograph as well but is does concern me that their number will increas to unacceptable levels. So has given some thought to controlling their numbers. So today I bought a bait box and some non poisonous rat bait that probably wouldn't work anyway! So my plan was to remove all the bird food and place the bait box in a save place where the rats could get to it and away from the birds and other animal etc ect.
So the bait was laid and bird food removed.
Back inside I coauthor sight of this kestrel swoop down and take one of the rats. It lingered just outside the window for long enough for me to run upstairs and grab my camera, turn it on. Just as I raised it to focus away it flew rat in claws.
It didn't go far before it landed and started to eat the rat. I could still see it but the damed buddlia leaves obscured the view.
Anyway we now have a natural preditor that hopefully will control the rats so I have returned the rat bait to the cupboard for now and replenished the feeders hopeing for some better opertunities to photograph the kestrel.
I hope it is a kestrel?
