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No Common Kestrels Were Recorded at Rani for Three Consecutive Winters

Female common kestrel at Jawai, Rajasthan, India
Conservation · Population & status

No common kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) were recorded along a 5 km monitoring route at Rani in Assam, India during the winters of 2022–23, 2023–24 or 2024–25. The three zero-record winters followed more than a decade in which kestrels had been recorded regularly at the site.

Records declined before falling to zero for three winters

Sachin Ranade monitored the route during November–February for 14 winter seasons from 2011–12 to 2024–25. The dataset comprised 840 transects and 422 kestrel sightings. Annual records remained between 34 and 48 through 2019–20, then fell to 35 in 2020–21 and 20 in 2021–22 before reaching zero for the final three winters.

Graph showing common kestrel encounter rate at Rani, Assam over 14 winter seasons
Common kestrel encounter rate during the monitored winter seasons at Rani, Assam. Figure 3 from Ranade (2026), CC BY 4.0.

Rani’s paddy fields become broad open areas after harvest, and kestrels had used electrical poles as hunting perches while taking prey such as mice, lizards and insects. Ranade notes that the same road was travelled almost daily in the later years and raptors were also recorded opportunistically, strengthening the evidence that kestrels had stopped appearing on this particular route.

The zero records were local to Rani, not all of Assam

The result is local, not a disappearance from Assam. Common kestrels were still observed elsewhere in Kamrup District and Assam during 2022–25. The study does not establish why they stopped appearing at Rani. Expansion of nearby Guwahati is raised as one possibility, but the author calls for broader counts and more detailed work on habitat and feeding ecology before the cause can be determined.

Sources and image credit

  1. Ranade, S. (2026). Decline in winter visiting Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus (Falconiformes: Falconidae) at Rani, Assam 2011–2024. Journal of Threatened Taxa, 18(7), 29357–29359. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9764.18.7.29357-29359Primary open-access study published online and in print 26 July 2026 under CC BY 4.0. Fourteen winter seasons at Rani, Assam produced 422 common kestrel sightings; encounter rates declined after 2020 and no kestrels were recorded in the final three winters.

Image: Charles J. Sharp / Wikimedia Commons — female common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) at Jawai, Rajasthan, India, photographed 28 November 2017. Representative Indian species image; not a bird from the Rani monitoring study in Assam. Cropped vertically for News Desk framing. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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