There is a short story about the Kestrels.  When I was in graduate school at Virginia Tech I was doing research on the gray squirrel.  One phase of the study involved placing squirrel nest boxes in trees and monitoring them.  On several occasions I had problems with birds occupying the boxes, so I had to remove their nests, etc.  In one of the boxes I found four tan eggs with brown spots on them.  Instead of destroying them I brought them to the lab and placed them in the 37 degree incubator and turned them over twice a day.  Before long, three of the four eggs hatched.  I hand-fed the hatchlings until they were mature enough to eat baby mice, etc from the lab.  I gave one of the kestrels away and kept two as pets (a male and a female).  I would let them fly loose in my basement all day long and then cage them at night.  It was really fun to watch them and see them develop.  They would fly to me when I called them and land on my arm.  There were some large, clothes-washing type sinks in the basement and I would leave about an inch of water in them for the birds.  They would get into the water, splash about and get soaking wet, then hop up on the rim of the sink and drip a while, then fly up to a perch near a light bulb and dry out.  They really loved to eat crickets.  I would go to the bait shop and buy a couple dozen crickets and return with them in a paper bag.  Every time I'd go to the basement to visit the birds they would get all excited.  When I would try to hide my hands, they would do their best to get around to see what I was bringing.  I had a large perch for them to rest on that was at a level they could see out the window of the basement door.  I would sit down and get really still, then I would ease my hand into the bag and get a cricket.  While doing this they would fly back and forth a time or two to me from the perch.  Trying to catch them off guard, I would quickly bring my hand out of the bag and flip a cricket as far as I could toward the floor.  They would be after it as quick as lightning, often catching the cricket in midair before it landed on the floor.  I really had a lot of fun with them.  Since this was back in the late 1960's in Virginia, a permit was not required to keep them as pets at the time.  I had them for several years, and would take them along in a cage in the car when making trips from home.  Unfortunately, one of them (the male) had an accident in the basement and died.  In 1971, when I moved from Blacksburg, VA to Richmond, VA I had to give my last kestrel away to someone who lived in the country, because I did not have a place to keep it in Richmond.  They are really intelligent and fascinating birds.  I learned a lot from them.

Jim