Found an injured kestrel or raptor? How to help without getting hurt

If you're in a city and you see a raptor on the ground, there's a good chance it's a kestrel — Italy's most common falcon, perfectly at home nesting on bell towers, motorway bridges and the cornices of old city centres. It measures about 33 cm and has a distinctive flight style: it hovers motionless in the air, wings beating rapidly while its head stays completely still relative to the ground.

That hovering style is called "kiting," and the kestrel uses it to spot prey from above. There's an extraordinary ability behind it: it can see in ultraviolet, and mouse urine trails reflect UV rays. It follows these trails like a map, tracking rodents' preferred routes even under leaf litter.

An animal calibrated so precisely, if you find it on the ground, is almost certainly unwell.

When it needs help (and when it doesn't)

It needs help if:

It's on the ground and hasn't flown after 30 minutes of observation from a distance
One wing hangs asymmetrically
It has visible wounds, blood, or a torpid posture
It's walking in circles or not responding to stimuli

Don't intervene immediately if:

It's a juvenile moving along a ledge with parents nearby. Young kestrels learn to fly gradually, moving along vertical surfaces before taking full flight. Watch for an hour before acting.

After a window or car collision, the raptor may seem "stunned" and recover on its own within 30–60 minutes — but it may also have invisible internal injuries. If after 30 minutes of rest it hasn't taken flight, it needs a wildlife rescue centre.

How to pick it up without getting hurt

This is the critical point: a kestrel that seems weak can inflict serious wounds with its talons. They're designed to pierce a mouse's skin — they do exactly the same to a human hand. This isn't aggression, it's pure reflex.

Use a thick blanket or heavy towel. Cover the raptor from above, pin its wings to its body, then wrap the animal in the fabric. Don't compress the chest — raptors breathe with their whole ribcage and if you hold too tight they can suffocate.

For transport: a cardboard box with ventilation holes, lined with a towel. Don't use a pet carrier: the bars damage the beak and feathers. The box should be big enough for it to stand, but not so big it can flap its wings.

Cover the eyes with a cloth: darkness dramatically reduces stress.

What never to do

Don't feed it without instructions from the rescue centre. No raw meat, no mice, no chicken. A raptor's rehabilitation diet is very specific.
Don't force water: risk of pulmonary aspiration.
Don't keep it at home for days or weeks waiting for it to recover. A raptor that seems "better" may have internal fractures, infections, or neurological damage that only a vet can diagnose.
Don't photograph it, show it to children, or film it: handling stress in raptors can cause death from cardiac arrest. It's not uncommon.
Don't handle with bare hands: zoonosis risk (salmonella, psittacosis).

Contact a wildlife rescue centre, not your regular vet

A general vet doesn't have the tools to manage a raptor — that's not a criticism, it's simply a different specialism. Wildlife rescue centres (CRAS) have staff specifically trained in wild fauna: rehabilitators, wildlife vets, volunteers who know how to feed a kestrel, how to do physiotherapy on a broken wing, how to prepare it for release.

Use WildSOS to find the nearest centre that accepts raptors: response times for an injured bird of prey are measured in hours, not days.

An important legal note

The kestrel is protected under Italian Law 157/1992 and the Birds Directive. As a Falconidae, it also falls under the CITES Convention (Appendix II): keeping it without authorisation, trading it or capturing it is a criminal offence, not just an administrative fine.