Parental gesture: A female falcon adopted four orphaned falcon chicks at Tel Aviv’s Safari Zoo. The nurses are touched.
An injured female kestrel has adopted four orphaned chicks at Safari Zoo near Tel Aviv. The falcon was taken to the zoo clinic with a wing injury, a spokeswoman said.
In the cage next door sat four hungry lesser kestrel chicks whose nest had been destroyed during construction work. The keeper discovered that the female raptor began to feed the little ones with their own food through the bars.
“Carers were touched by the parental gesture and decided to bring them together,” spokeswoman Sagit Horowitz said. It will make their return to the wild easier if they are raised by a female of their own species and with as little human contact as possible. Kestrels and Lesser Kestrels are very similar; females and juveniles are particularly difficult to tell apart.
