April 16

     Well, we are about one month in to the season now. Every year I arbitrarily designate the "beginning" of the season as March 15.  At this point in the season, some boxes have pairs at this time that have actually begun laying eggs while other boxes have not shown evidence of any kestrels visiting them at all.  Up until now, most of my box visits have consisted mainly of binocular views from a distance looking for the presence of either starlings or kestrels on, in, or near the boxes. 

     After a month of no discernible activity at some boxes, it is now important that I actually climb the ladder and go into all of those "dead" boxes to see if there are any clues inside as to whether they have actually had any visitors or not. This is very, very time-consuming, but necessary. Today's box visits represent the entire gamut of what you might find when looking into boxes that appear to have had no visitors.  One "dead" box I visited today was full of grass and typical starling nesting material. I had never seen starlings at this box, but they obviously had entered the box and spent time there. I dumped everything out, refilled the box with shavings and moved on. Another box was completely untouched with the shavings looking as pristine as the day I put them in there. Another box had a well defined depression in the center of the shavings. I call this depression a cup. The presence of a cup-shaped depression in the center of the shavings is a sure sign that kestrels have entered the box and begun preparing the shavings for egg laying. I had never seen a kestrel anywhere near this box in the last month, but the signs were definitely there. It is actually not that surprising if you think about it. I only spend perhaps 10 minutes every other day watching any particular box. Given that there are 12 hours of daylight every day it is easy to see how their movements can go unnoticed by me during my rounds.

      The next 4 or 5 days will be spent going into every box that has shown no apparent activity. The birds are still moving into the area, so this becomes a very active, interesting time of the year for kestrel nestbox managers.