Kestrel & Mouse Colorado                  click to enlarge

Mouse meat may not even sound like meat to you. When we think of meat, or at least when I think of meat, images of steamship round of beef, or a haunch of elk, or even a quarter pounder with Cheese come to mind, not mouse meat. Mouse meat hardly brings up an image at all. I don’t think you could get enough ground round off a mouse to make a teenie, wienie, ittty-bitty, tiny small little burger.

But to this Kestrel, we’re talking  [The BEST]. In the beef world less than 2% of all beef in the U.S. is graded prime, but in the Kestrel world 100% of the mouse meat is USDA Prime. If he can catch it, its prime and he eats it all, right down to and including the tail.

The other day when I was out trying to force the appearance of Spring I went to a few of my favorite shooting grounds hoping that there would be something, anything, shootable. I would even consider shooting a mouse if one were available and I didn’t have to spend time with his agent getting releases signed, royalties discussed, etc., when who should appear but a Kestrel with its favorite meal, mouse meat.

Since the mouse was already dead I didn’t have to do the agent/photographer dance and I could shoot until my shutter finger gave out. Kestrels have an agreement with the Wildlife Photographers Association that gives us unlimited rights to photograph them if we agree to never trap mice. I had signed this way early on so I just shot until he was done eating and flew away. That is probably more Kestrel images than I need but then it has been a long dry spell and I needed badly to shoot something.

But you know what, shooting that Kestrel was kind of like the economy, it was an improvement, it means things are slowly getting back to some kind of normal. It may not be grizzly bears but it was wildlife and it felt good shooting mouse meat. I’m going back out tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get lucky and see a Redtail hawk getting a rabbit. Now that would be something. I’ll let you know how it turns out.