April 3

     This post will cover both today's and yesterday's activities.  The combined mileage for both days is 266 miles with 66 combined box visits. I thought that the continued very strong NNW winds would be holding up the birds south of us, but there was actually pretty decent numbers of birds showing up-especially today. When the temps really warm up mid-week next week we could be in for quite a push. There are now pairs at 7 boxes with an additional 5 boxes showing single birds in the area. It was always my belief, from the reading I have done, that the males show up first to begin establishing territories with the females showing up 2-3 weeks later. So far that is not the case in my study area. To date I have seen 8 females and 4 males at various box locations. I don't know what that means, but it bears watching as the season progresses. 

     The trapping of adults to date has begun to yield some very important information about site fidelity and the process of box selection early on. One female banded as an adult from the Depot Road box last year has been caught twice already this season at two different box locations. Once at East Road North and once at the Grant Farm. Both of this year's locations are approximately 8/10ths of a mile from the original capture site last year. The female captured today at the Middle Road pole box was, in fact, captured and banded at that very same box last spring. It will be interesting to see if she jumps around or stays put and breeds at the Middle Road box. In the past two days two additional unbanded females have been caught as well as one unbanded male. They are now wearing jewelry and will hopefully provide us information in the future.

      I'm sure you are all wondering what the photo is at the top of this post. Starlings are the major NUMBER ONE problem in my study area when it comes to factors affecting kestrel nestbox success. Even though kestrels are in the mighty falcon family of raptors, they are very wimpy when it comes to ousting starlings from nestboxes. Starlings are very, very numerous in my area and are very aggressive cavity nesters. My number one responsibility for these next 6 weeks is to keep starlings out of the boxes to provide open windows of opportunity for the kestrels to move in. Once the kestrels "adopt" a box, the starlings do not come near it. In the early years of my project, I would merely climb the ladder, scare the starlings out of the box, close it up and hope for the best. It didn't take long to realize that before I even got back to the car, the starlings were often already back in the box. Permanently removing them was the only solution that would work. Since they are not a native species, it is legal to euthanize starlings. The bigger problem was catching them. Above is a trap devised by an elderly gentleman in Iowa that is the only thing I found that would work. The trap in the photo is in the set position. The starlings can not see it from the outside of the box. As they enter the hole, they trip the metal wire you see sticking out which slams the folded back metal plate up against the hole, blocking their way out of the box. After that, they are dealt with accordingly.

     Total miles to date=1020   Total box visits to date= 222