Overstuffed raptor...?

Yes, yet another raptor post...

Her usual vantage point over the potager... the walnut tree.

I saw a different type of behaviour from our local Kestrel yesterday morning.
She wasn't on watch like this in the Walnut tree...
she was on the ground in the potager...
just standing there...
then she stamped a bit...
I thought she'd decided to hunt for insects on the ground...
and was trying to disturb them...
but she then took off with a vole in her left claw....

So what... well, it was very odd!

This was where she flew to from just left of the picture.

Odd, yes, mainly because she flew low...
very low...
and for only a few yards...
before settling on a pile of old tomato plant stems that we'd set aside for burning.

She stood there for a moment...
looking around...
checking the area.

A closer picture of the blighted tomato stems.

She then she swung the vole forward and dropped it on the pile...
she "mantled "... ie: spread her wings over the kill to shield it from others.
I was expecting to watch her eat it....
but no!

What she did next was something I've never seen before....
she poked it, head first, down into the pile....
"hiding" it.

The hidden Field Vole.

And she then flew up into the walnut tree and took up watch.

Back on her normal vantage point.

I can only think that she had recently eaten her fill, spotted the vole and took it before anything else could... with the scarcity of prey around... and decided to cache it for later.

This is not something that I have heard that raptors habitually do...
but Shrikes are renown for creating "larders"...
so why not the raptors as well?

Given the fact that we saw the male Hen Harrier hunting in the field next door later....
I think her decision was a good one.
The only problem with this sort of hiding place...
it can only be short term.
Unless she came back to it whilst we were out...
night scavengers...
fox...
fouine...
badger...
Jerry...
will probably sniff out and scoff her snack!