The Hobby – Falco subbuteo

Hobbies have a grey-brown head with white cheeks and a yellow and black hooked bill. Their breast is white with dark streaks, while the thighs are a rusty-red colour. The presence of these red ‘trousers’ is the easiest way to distinguish the hobby from the similarly-sized kestrel and the much larger peregrine. Their wings are greyish on top and white with dark streaks underneath, and appear long and pointed in flight.

Hobbies are falcons , their closest relatives are the kestrel, peregrine and merlin

The hobby is a summer visitor to the UK, coming here to breed before heading south for the winter. Birds begin to arrive from late March onwards and start to depart from late August, with almost all having left by October. Hobbies spend the winter in tropical Africa, flying thousands of miles each year.

Rather than build their own nests, hobbies rely on those built by other species such as old crows nests. Two to three eggs are normally laid in June, hatching after around a month. The chicks spend roughly a month in the nest before fledging and are fully independent by the end of summer before both parents start their winter migration to Africa.

The football game ‘Subbuteo’ is based on the Latin name for hobby because it was the designer’s favourite bird

Hobbies are opportunistic feeders with a wide variety of insects and around 96 species of bird documented as prey items. They are among the most agile and acrobatic birds of prey. They are capable of catching fast-flying birds such as swallows and swifts in mid-air. Another important food source is dragonflies, which are also caught, and sometimes eaten, in flight. Large eyes allow the hobby to be very active at dusk when it is highly successful at hunting bats and insects in the twilight, well after sunset.

Conservation status

The Hobby has a global conservation status of least concern ,   but in the UK, it’s listed as Green (low concern) under birds under concern  (2021). Like most wildlife in the UK it is protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Classifying them as a Schedule 1 species, making it illegal to intentionally harm them, their nests, eggs, or young, or to disturb them near their nests, with severe penalties like fines and jail time.

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