The Boy and the Kestrel

A quiet, patient boy in a mustard yellow raincoat and red rubber boots walks each morning to the edge of the grassy fields, carrying his sketchbook and pencils. Above him a small falcon hovers almost motionless, and he wants to understand how it holds itself so steady. Again and again he returns to the same flat rock, drawing the kestrel and filling his pages with rabbits, bees, larks and the waving grass.

A middle-aged woman with silver-grey hair and a bird-shaped brooch pauses to admire his work, telling him that kestrels are patient hunters and urging him to keep watching. Her words stay with him, and his quiet persistence is rewarded on a sunny morning when the bird finally drops into the grass and rises with its catch. His sketchbook grows into a record of the whole grassland, and his patient observation eventually carries his drawings to a public exhibition at a nearby nature museum. Written by Çınar BİBER, this gentle tale can be read on Masalcı Baba.