April 7

     Surprise, surprise!!  With almost 60 boxes to check and clean out every year you are bound to have a surprise encounter every now and then. Usually it is just field mice or squirrels but last winter, while taking a box down in South Windsor, I found this gray screech owl staring back at me when I opened the box up to clean it out. He allowed me to reach in and gently pick him up and seemed pretty content to just look around before finally flying off. 

     Today the wind changed direction from NNW to S (finally!!) and, as expected, it resulted in me seeing quite a few kestrels moving through my study area today. From their behaviour it was obvious that most were simply migrating through, but I was able to capture three birds, two of which had been previously banded in my project area. One was banded as an adult in 2012 about 4 miles from where I saw her today. Another one was banded as a nestling in 2011 at a box that is 19 miles away. The third bird was banded with a federal band, but the band was never registered with the Bird Banding Laboratory so I will have to contact them to find out the original banding location of that bird. It was definitely not banded at any time during my years on this project. The information that I am getting from the recapture of these banded birds is extremely important. Never before did I have any idea of the origin of the birds that would show up every spring at the boxes. Over time we will learn a great deal about how many local birds return, what percentage of birds that return were originally project nestlings, and what percentage of returning birds are from somewhere out of the project area. It will also be interesting to see if there are patterns of nesting returns and site fidelity that are gender based as well as patterns that may be age class based. All good stuff. 

     Total miles traveled so far this season=1299.  Total  number of box visits to date=308.