I was out and about by the River Devon near Tillicoultry and as I rounded one of the river’s wide looping bends, a hunched bird about the size of a small woodpigeon came into view sitting atop a nearby telegraph pole and gazing intently down into the haugh or flood meadow.

It was a young male kestrel, the blue-greys on the plumage of his head and tail having not quite yet developed. As I stopped to watch the small falcon, it made a shallow swoop into the meadow and quickly rose again with a field vole in its talons.

As the kestrel flew away, I reflected upon the fact that had this exact same situation occurred 20 or 30 years ago, I might not have even given the bird a second glance such was the familiarity of the kestrel, which at that time was our commonest bird of prey.

It was abundant in the countryside and had adapted well to life in our towns and cities, nesting in buildings and church towers. A car journey along our motorways would almost always be accompanied by at least one sighting of a kestrel hovering 30ft or so above the verge in its hunt for voles and invertebrates.

Indeed, so common was the kestrel along our highways that it was dubbed the ‘motorway falcon’.

But since the early 1990s the kestrel population in Scotland has plummeted. There are a number of speculative theories for the decline, including changes in the natural population dynamics of field voles, the kestrel’s principal prey.

Interestingly, the dramatic increase in buzzard numbers in recent decades directly mirrors the fall of the kestrel. I reckon that is no coincidence – but that’s nature I suppose. Nonetheless, it would be good to have definitive scientific research to shed light on whether this is indeed the case and also determine any other reasons behind the demise of this most compelling little falcon.