What kind of hawk is this?

[ness]

54 minutes ago, Terrierman said:

You take good pictures!

Hah! Just a screen grab to show what they look like. Not mine. 

[Terrierman]

2 hours ago, ness said:

Hah! Just a screen grab to show what they look like. Not mine. 

Should have said "I know, thanks it was my new Nikon set at F whatever and more photographer juju talk."  That or "Aw pshaw, that's nothing."

[Al Agnew]

Wow, you guys are a whole lot better than the average run of people on the Missouri Nature Lovers group on Facepuke.  By now there would have been about a hundred completely wrong guesses on there.  One time when somebody there posted a picture of a kestrel and asked what kind of bird it was, two people said it was a dove!

When I was a kid, Dad found a fledgling kestrel that had fallen out of a nest into Wappapello Lake, and brought it home.  I would feed it hamburger, grasshoppers, and sparrows I shot with my BB gun...after all, it was a sparrow hawk, wasn't it?  One time I brought it a sparrow that was still very much alive, and found out that kestrels instinctively know how to kill things...it pounced upon that sparrow, mantling over it and holding it down with one foot, and proceeded to peck the crap out of the bird's skull until it died.  By that time it could fly, so we agreed, Dad and I, to let it go.  Never saw it again.

[Mitch f]

17 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

Wow, you guys are a whole lot better than the average run of people on the Missouri Nature Lovers group on Facepuke.  By now there would have been about a hundred completely wrong guesses on there.  One time when somebody there posted a picture of a kestrel and asked what kind of bird it was, two people said it was a dove!

When I was a kid, Dad found a fledgling kestrel that had fallen out of a nest into Wappapello Lake, and brought it home.  I would feed it hamburger, grasshoppers, and sparrows I shot with my BB gun...after all, it was a sparrow hawk, wasn't it?  One time I brought it a sparrow that was still very much alive, and found out that kestrels instinctively know how to kill things...it pounced upon that sparrow, mantling over it and holding it down with one foot, and proceeded to peck the crap out of the bird's skull until it died.  By that time it could fly, so we agreed, Dad and I, to let it go.  Never saw it again.

Great Story!
Believe it or not, I have a story that I took to heart from my dad, as a child in rural Arkansas in the late 1920’s. When my dad was 8 years old, he noticed a Kestrel living in their Martin house. He had decided he was going to catch it. The pole for the Martin house was wedged up against an old rickety fence. Every time he tried to sneak up and climb the fence, it would squeak and crackle and the hawk would fly away. One day, after a one foot deep overnight snow. He slowly climbed up the fence, the squeaking was dampened by the snow as he slowly crept up and covered the hole. He reached in and grabbed it. As he went back to the house he clutched it against his chest and the Kestrel drew blood on his chest. 
He and his brothers made a make shift cage for it and believe it or not, they took it to the post office and sent it to the Memphis zoo. A few weeks later the zoo sent him a letter thanking him.

I believe in my heart that someone probably released it and the zoo sent him a letter just to make a kid feel good...but it was a good story for me as a child.