April 9

     The above picture shows you what kestrel eggs look like. No.......this picture was not taken this year, but quite soon I should be able to post a picture of the first eggs laid this season. One thing I have learned from this project is that the window for nesting and egg laying is much wider than many originally thought. The graph below (the yellow text is hard to read, but I'm too lazy to fix it...long day) shows the range of egg laying dates last year. The window was nearly 2 months long. So while a box or two probably now have eggs in them, many boxes have not even seen any birds yet. The typical clutch size is 4-5 eggs.

     Some facts to date. 15 adults have been trapped, 7 of which were recaptures. At some point I will summarize all the recapture data, but that won't be until late summer. As of today, 20 boxes have had birds in the vicinity-some pairs, some not, but it is important to note that this does NOT mean that all 20 of those boxes will have breeding birds in them when all is said and done. Good sign though. There are still many historically "good" boxes that haven't had birds at them yet. I find it very interesting that so far this season only 11 starlings have been eliminated. Last year at this time, over 40 had been eliminated. I have some ideas on this, but that will be a topic for later in the season when the starlings are no longer a factor. Miles traveled to date=1,447   Number of box visits=363