Kestrel

Kestrel (pronounced kes-truhl)

(1) A common small falcon (especially the Falco tinnunculus), of northern parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, notable for hovering in the air with its head to the wind, its primary diet the small mammals it plucks from the ground.

(2) Any of a number of related small falcons.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English castrell, from the Middle English castrel & staniel (bird of prey), from the Middle French cresserelle & quercerelle (bird of prey), a variant of the Old French crecerelle, from cressele (rattle; wooden reel), from the unattested Vulgar Latin crepicella & crepitacillum, a diminutive of crepitāculum (noisy bell; rattle), from the Classical Latin crepitāre (to crackle, to rattle), from crepāre (to rustle). The connection with the Latin is undocumented and based on the folk belief their noise frightened away other hawks.  However, some etymologists contest the connection with the Latin forms and suggest a more likely source is a krek- or krak- (to crack, rattle, creak, emit a bird cry), from the Middle Dutch crāken (to creak, crack), from the Old Dutch krakōn (to crack, creak, emit a cry), from the Proto-West Germanic krakōn, from the Proto-Germanic krakōną (to emit a cry, shout), from the primitive Indo-European gerg- (to shout).  It was cognate with the Old High German krahhōn (to make a sound, crash), the Old English cracian (to resound) and the French craquer (to emit a repeated cry, used of birds).  All however concur the un-etymological -t- probably developed in French.  Kestrel is a noun; the noun plural is kestrels.

In taxonomy, the variations include the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), the Banded kestrel (Falco zoniventris), the Common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), the Greater kestrel (Falco rupicoloides), the Grey kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus), the Lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), the Nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroides), the Seychelles kestrel (Falco araeus) and the Spotted kestrel (Falco moluccensis).  Although the bird had earlier been described as the castrell, in the early seventeenth century the small falcons were more commonly known as windhovers, the construct being wind + hover, reflecting the observations of the ability of the birds literally to hover when facing into the wind.  A now more memorable term however was the one dating from the 1590s: The windfucker (or the fuckwind).  In English, for almost two centuries, any use of the F-word could be controversial and its very existence seemed to make uncomfortable one faction of lexicographers who at one point managed to strike it from almost all dictionaries of English.  They were also revisionists of historical interpretation and claimed windfucker & fuckwind were errors in transcription, the original folk-names being windsucker & suckwind.  To give theis theory a bit of academic gloss, they assembled charts of regionally specific pronunciation in the Late Middle and early Modern English to illustrate the extent to which the archaic long S character ( ſ ) often took the place of an < s > at both the beginnings and middle of words, the argument being the long S was misread as a lowercase ( f ).

It was an intellectually clever way to attempt to remove vulgarity from English but etymologists today give little credence to the theory, noting that the undisputed French sources provide no support.  It may be assumed kestrels came to be called windfuckers & fuckwinds because when displaying their expertise at hovering in the air when facing into the wind, the movements of their bodies does make it look as if airborne copulation is in progress.  Of note too is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the same disapprobation didn’t always attach to “fuck” which, although there was a long history of meaning “fornication”, it had also been in figurative use to describe anything from “plough furrows in a field” to “chop down a tree”.  Fuck was from the Middle English fukken and probably of Germanic origin, from either the Old English fuccian or the Old Norse fukka, both from the Proto-Germanic fukkōną, from the primitive Indo-European pewǵ- (to strike, punch, stab).  It was probably the popularity of use as well as the related career as a general-purpose vulgar intensifier which attracted such disapproval.  By 1795 it had been banished from all but the most disreputable dictionaries, not to re-appear until the more permissive 1960s.

Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, Gran Sasso d'Italia massif, Italy, during the mission to rescue Mussolini from captivity, 12 September 1943.  The Duce is sitting in the passenger compartment.

Windfucker thus became archaic but not wholly extinct because it appears in at least one British World War II (1939-1945) diary entry which invoked the folk-name for the bird to describe the German liaison & communications aircraft, the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (stork), famous for its outstanding short take-off & landing (STOL) performance and low stalling speed of 30 mph (50 km/h) which enabled it almost to hover when faced into a headwind.  The Storch’s ability to land in the length of a cricket pitch (22 yards (20.12 m)) made it a useful platform for all sorts of operations, the most famous of which was the daring landing on a mountain-top in northern Italy to rescue the deposed Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943).  So short was the length of the strip of grass available for take-off that even for a Storch it was touch & go (especially with the Duce’s not inconsiderable weight added) but with inches to spare, the little plane safely delivered its cargo.

Riley was one of the storied names of the British motor industry, beginning as a manufacturer of bicycles in 1896, an after some early experiments as early as 1899, sold its first range of cars in 1905.  Success followed but so did troubles and by 1938, the company had been absorbed into the Nuffield organization.  Production continued but in the post-war years, Riley joined Austin, Morris, Wolseley and MG as part of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) conglomerate and the unique features of the brand began to disappear, the descent to the era of “badge engineering” soon complete.  The last Rileys were the Elf (a tarted-up Mini with a longer boot which was ascetically somehow wrong) and the Kestrel (a tarted-up Austin 1300), neither of which survived the great cull when BMC was absorbed by the doomed British Leyland, marque shuttered in 1969, never to return.

Pre-war Riley Kestrels: 1938 1½ litre four-light Kestrel Sports Saloon (left), 1939 2½ litre Kestrel fixed head coupé (with post-war coachwork) (centre) and 1937 1½ litre 12/4 Kestrel Sprite Special Sports (right).

It was a shame because the pre-war cars in particular had been stylish and innovative, noted for an unusual form of valve activation which used twin camshafts mounted high in the block (thus not “overhead camshafts (OHC)”) which provided the advantages of short pushrods & optimized valve placement offered by the OHC arrangements without the weight and complexity.  Also of interest were their pre-selector transmissions, a kind of semi-automatic gearbox.  Among the most admired had been the 1½ & 2½ litre Kestrels (1934-1940), most of which wore built with saloon coachwork in four or six-light configurations although there were also fixed head (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC) as well as a few special, lightweight roadsters.

1935 Riley 1½ litre Kestrel (Chassis 22T 1238, Engine SL 4168) with custom coachwork (2004)

The intriguing mechanical specifications and the robust chassis has made them attractive candidates for re-bodying as an alternative to restoration.  Not all approve of such things (the originality police are humorless puritans as uncompromising as any Ayatollah) but some outstanding coachwork has been fashioned, almost always the result of converting a saloon or limousine to a coupé, convertible or roadster.  The 1935 1½ litre Kestrel above began life as a four-door saloon which was converted to a DHC during 2004 and the lines have been much-admired, recalling (obviously at a smaller scale) some of the special-bodied Mercedes-Benz SS (1928-1933), the more ostentatious of the larger Buccialis (1928-1933) and the Bugatti Royale (1927-1933).

A kestrel windfucking.