One of the UK’s most familiar birds of prey, the kestrel, saw numbers tumble in recent years, a major annual survey of British birds revealed yesterday.

The latest Breeding Birds Survey showed numbers of kestrels – often seen hovering over major roads looking for small rodents – plunged by 36 per cent between 2008 and 2009.

The dramatic drop came on top of long-term declines which saw kestrel numbers fall by a fifth (20 per cent) between 1995 and 2008, the survey run by the British Trust for Ornithology found.

Declines in kestrels between the 1970s and 1990s were attributed to the impact of more intensive agriculture on habitats needed by populations of small mammals which the birds prey on, but the reasons for more recent declines are unclear.

Last year’s major fall in numbers of the bird which inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Windhover could be linked to the hard winter, with prolonged freezing temperatures in January and February making hunting for their prey difficult.