April 24

Better to be safe than sorry...............

     A couple of weeks ago I was parked alongside the road with my binoculars out checking a nestbox in a neighboring field. Out of my rearview mirror I noticed a local town police car come up behind me very slowly and proceed to go past me very, very slowly. For a couple of years now I have thought about the attention I must drawing to myself as I repeatedly drive slowly past houses with my binoculars, spotting scope and/or camera out-often stopping near houses to gain the best view of a particular box that I don't have field access to. The fact that my car has no exhaust system (got ripped off in a cornfield 3 weeks ago), is usually covered with either mud or cow manure, and the occupant, after 10 hours of checking boxes, can look more than a little sketchy got me to thinking that I should take some measures to identify myself to help allay any suspicions that might be out there about my behavior.  Now each side door has the magnet sign that you see pictured above. I also will be going in person to the police departments in every town that I work in to identify myself, give them my license plate number, and a description of the car.  I don't take this lightly. In this day and age, I can certainly understand why there might be questions about who I am and what I am up to. 

     It has now been 46 days since I officially started checking boxes for the 2013 season. The next 2 weeks are probably the biggest roller coaster ride that a kestrel researcher goes  through all season.  Boxes that have had absolutely no sign of kestrel activity end up having kestrel eggs in them while other boxes that have shown the repeated presence of pairs of kestrels for a week or more end up, for some unknown reason, to be abandoned ( I have never had them abandoned with eggs in them).  New boxes that might have been erected only a week or two ago now have kestrels sitting on top of them while boxes that have been successful for two or three or four years running have no birds interested this year (yet...............)  Go figure. All bets are off until you finally see eggs in any given box. We're getting there, but I haven't seen any eggs yet.

     Since I started on March 8 I have done 608 box visits.   Total miles traveled so far this season= 2,512.