Great American Kestrel Conservation

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today I'm joined by Jon Kauffman.

He's with Shaver's Creek Environmental Center.

At Shaver's Creek, he's involved in citizen science projects and overseeing those, but part of his time is spent working with American Kestrels.

Jon's work is fascinating.

We're gonna learn about that today.

Jon, what are you doing with kestrels?

- Sure, yeah, so the American Kestrel is North America's smallest falcon and unlike its relatives, the Merlin or Peregrine Falcon, it's spending its most of it time in agricultural settings and there's secondary cavity nesters.

So what that means, much like blue birds, eastern blue birds, putting up a nest box really helps the kestrels.

- What else about their biology is interesting?

- Yeah, what's really interesting is they are part of a lot of farmlands and so they're utilizing those farmlands for their habitat and for finding food and raising young.

Kestrels prefer grassland and pasture lands.

And the grassland is mostly grazing land, not so much the alfalfa, corn, and soybean, but more of the sheep pastures, the horse pastures.

- [Sanford] Good habitat is essentially fields that have not been mowed, is that right?

- [Jon] Correct.

- [Sanford] What are they eating?

- [Jon] Yeah, so mostly during listing season, which is around March and April, they're picking food mostly of rodents, mice and meadow voles.

- [Sanford] And I understand they eat a lot of insects though too in the summer.

- [Jon] Yeah, absolutely.

As the changing of the season comes and they're picking off a lot of beetles and grasshoppers.

- [Sanford] There might be someone watching that has never seen a kestrel before.

How would you describe the bird?

- [Jon] Yeah, so the kestrel is a smaller falcon and it's about the size of a mourning dove and they like to sit on power lines, so you may have seen them while you're driving down the road, but they're not as gray as a morning dove.

They're much more brighter in color.

The male is much more bright blue while the female's more of a burnt orange.

- What can you tell us about the work that you do, though?

I know you, you help landowners adopt a nest box, so to speak, but then what goes on there?

- [Jon] Sure.

Once they choose to adopt, I put a box up and I check the box throughout the year.

So checking the box can mean going out in February and making sure everything's staying dry inside.

- [Sanford] So you get them set up with a box, but then what happens?

What's your work then thereafter?

- [Jon] Well, my work involves checking the box to see if there's success or if there's some things that we prefer not to be in the box such as a European starling, or maybe there even is a screech owl in there.

So we're just checking in on the box.

Once we have eggs, we continue to kind of monitor the box into the season if the nestlings will leave the box.

- [Sanford] Yeah.

How long do they set on those eggs?

- [Jon] Sure, yeah.

They lay about five eggs in a season.

So after the fifth egg is laid, they'll sit on those eggs for about 30 days and then after they'll hatch on day 30, there's another about 30 more days of growing their feathers and feeding and just kind of making sure that they're have a lot of nutrition for them to leave the box.

So it's about a two month timeframe and right now here in the end of May, some of the kestrels are leaving their boxes.

- [Sanford] Yeah, start to finish though they're ready to go almost as an independent bird.

- Absolutely.

Once they leave that box, they don't come back.

- That's amazing.

You mentioned that these kestrels are in the box and sometimes you go and take them out.

What are you doing then?

- Sure, yeah, when I take these birds out of the boxes, most of the time the landowners are welcoming families and friends that join in on the process and we are showing them a little bit up close of some of the nestlings.

And at this time it's about, they're only about 20 to 22 days old, so they're not fully grown.

You might see some fluff and white down feather on them, but we're gonna put bands on them and take some measurements to see how healthy they're growing and do a little bit of outreach.

And then maybe if those bands, which has a number on them, they may recover down the road in another region or another state and we can tell a story about these kestrels.

- Yeah, right, so it's got a number and like a website they go to.

They put that inform information in.

I think you mentioned earlier on that there are some conservation concerns with kestrels.

- [Jon] Yeah, so over the years we've been noticing through a bunch of citizen science projects, such as a Hawk Watch and Winter Raptor survey that the kestrels are declining in numbers.

Certain regions are declining much more such as the New Jersey or Piedmont region of Pennsylvania.

As we start seeing a decline in grassland and pasture land.

- [Sanford] They're needing some help and one way to help them is by putting up a kestrel box, right?

- [Jon] Absolutely.

Birds have needs as much as we have needs, and one of their needs is a secondary cavity, which is a box.

- Yeah, well, thank you folks for watching this video.

I hope you learned a little bit about American Kestrel and thank you, Jon for joining me today.

- Thank you.