A pointed-winged falcon with a long tail, well known for hovering. In Britain it uses grassland, farmland and open spaces in towns.
Males have a grey head and upper tail with a black terminal band. Females are browner, with several bars along the upper tail.
Common Kestrels search for prey from grassland. A study watched seven breeding pairs at six lowland farmland sites in northeast England for 470 hours from 2006 to 2008. From fixed vantage points, observers recorded hunting attempts and compared habitat use with availability. Grass no higher than 5 cm and cut within the previous two weeks made up only 3.5% of their observed foraging ranges on average, yet the birds selected it most strongly after habitat availability was taken into account.
For the six pairs with recorded prey, mammals outnumbered invertebrates by about 4.4 to 1 on cut grass and 1.7 to 1 on uncut grass. The authors proposed farmland that keeps long grass, where prey can live, close to short grass, where kestrels can find prey more easily. They also noted that hunting in woodland may have been under-recorded because birds were harder to see there.
IUCN Red List · Least Concern (LC) · Global
At the global scale, the IUCN Red List assessment published in 2021 classifies the Common Kestrel as Least Concern (LC). The assessment date was 10 August 2021; it estimated 4.3–6.7 million mature individuals and described the population trend as decreasing.
In the UK, the BTO lists the kestrel as Amber under Birds of Conservation Concern. UK government statistics published in 2026 report that the breeding population is 51% below its 1970 level, with little or no change over the latest five-year period, 2019–2024.