Data Submission Closing in on Another Record Year
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Another fall newsletter, another excuse to tell all of you how awesome you are! As of 10 November, 203 partners have submitted observation data from the 2023 breeding season, the most active partners we've ever had in a single season in the 12-year history of the American Kestrel Partnership (AKP). These data include a whopping 7,496 observations—nearly 450 more than we'd received by this date last year—from 1,602 nest boxes. Both of these figures are already the second-highest seasons in our history, and we're just 426 observations and 28 monitored boxes away from breaking these records as well!
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We've already broken one participation record in 2023, and we're getting very close to breaking two more. Got any unsubmitted data that will help us get there? | Photo by Matthew Danihel
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So far, observations have been submitted from nest boxes in the countries of Brazil and Panama, 37 US states, and six Canadian provinces and territories; these last two figures match our record single-season highs! These data include our first box observations from Alaska since 2014, and our first-ever observations from Alberta—important steps forward in our goal to build a complete picture of kestrel breeding activity across the species’ entire range.
We’re not gonna call anyone out by name (yet), but there are still a few locations from which we’re hoping there is still unsubmitted data. We received 2022 data from partners in British Columbia, Utah, and Kansas, and data from partners in Mississippi and Maine as recently as 2021, but all five regions are currently unrepresented in our 2023 dataset. We’re also seeing a few additional box programs in Ontario, Colorado, and Pennsylvania that submitted data in 2022, but minimal or no data from 2023. Wherever you are, if you have unsubmitted data, please submit it now!
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The vast majority of our active partners have submitted their data from the 2023 breeding season—thank you!!—but a few remaining partners are "AWOL." These partners submitted data in 2021 and/or 2022, but have yet to submit data from 2023. Is one of them you? | BG photo by Matthew Danihel; map created with mapchart.net
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A huge thank you to all of our partners who have gathered and contributed data during the 2023 breeding season. Our high total numbers are great, and we’re equally excited by the wide geographic spread of this year’s data. The more data y’all share, the more complete picture of regional variations in kestrel breeding activity we’re able to paint. Every observation submitted is a step forward for kestrel conservation, and we’re grateful for every step y’all take with us.
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Tails From a Wild 2023 Season
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As we just discussed, we’ve been excited to receive lots of raw observation data from the 2023 season. But we’ve also been excited to hear of some unique stories gathered by our partners this year. They were kind enough to share with us, and now we’d like to share them with you!
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In a box in the Alaskan interior this spring, this female kestrel was observed intentionally destroying one of her own eggs before she and her mate hatched the remaining four and raised the young to fledging. | Photo by Christi Kemper
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We’ll get the sad one out of the way first. At the AKP’s northernmost currently monitored box in Fairbanks, Alaska, AKP partner Christi Kemper observed some very unusual behavior through her box’s nest camera. Shortly before her eggs were due to hatch, the female kestrel was seen becoming very restless, spending at least 30 minutes moving her eggs around before settling on four of the eggs but leaving one—likely the "youngest" egg based on its markedly lighter pigmentation—out. About two hours later she pecked the egg open, then left the box with the carcass. The following day, both adults were seen incubating the remaining eggs, which hatched over the next two days; ultimately, four young kestrels fledged from the box. The current theories are that the female either detected the egg was inviable, or was acting according to instinctive behavior intended to weed out eggs laid by other birds, but it’s likely we’ll never know for certain.
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A series of unusual events led to a pair of kestrels occupying—and successfully fledging four young from—a box in Oregon that was just 2.5 ft (0.75 m) off the ground this past spring. | Photo by Diane Kook
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From there, we head south to Oregon, where Central Oregon Kestrel Team member Kim Kathol discovered an AKP first (a rarity these days after 12 seasons of data collection): the first ever Bufflehead nest reported by an AKP partner! Elsewhere in Oregon, Kathol’s fellow team member Diane Kook discovered the attachment hardware on one of her boxes had failed. Without a replacement on hand, she managed to temporarily mount the box at a much lower height than the standard 8–20 ft (2.5–6 m) we recommend, planning to properly reinstall it during her next visit. But the local kestrels had other ideas: by the time she returned, the box was occupied! Four kestrels eventually fledged from the limbo-level box, whose floor was a mere 2.5 ft (0.75 m) off the ground.
Heading east to Colorado, Denny Bohon, a volunteer with the Jefferson County Open Space Raptor Monitoring Program, reported a kestrel nest in an uncommon and very well-hidden location: a natural rock cavity within North Table Mountain Park. Large falcons such as Peregrine Falcons and Prairie Falcons routinely nest on cliff ledges, but their smaller cousins are much less likely to seek out a rocky home. These kestrels, however, clearly didn’t read the field guide, as Bohon reports they have occupied and fledged young here two years in a row!
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Unlike their larger cousins, American Kestrels only occasionally nest on cliffs, but an eagle-eyed AKP partner has observed a pair successfully fledging young from this Colorado cliff cavity two years in a row. Waldo ain't got nothing on this bird. | Photo by Kirstin Chapman
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Further east in Kansas, two AKP partners teamed up to recapture one very special kestrel on 5 June 2023. E/78, which appeared on the cover of the spring 2023 issue of Audubon Magazine, was first banded and fitted with a GPS tracker last winter in Denton County, Texas by our partners at the University of North Texas (UNT). She then turned up in a box monitored by Baker University’s Dr. Scott Kimball this spring! Kimball and the UNT team were able to recapture E/78 and retrieve her GPS tracker. “We were able to download 46 locations collected over a 182-day period, capturing her winter territory, spring migration route, and breeding territory in Kansas,” reports UNT’s Dr. Jim Bednarz. “We are super pleased with this hard-won success, and look forward to seeing if E/78 returns to Denton County this winter, and possibly back to Baldwin City to nest in 2024.”
And finally we head south of the border to Mexico, where a mammoth migration was mapped for one globe-hopping kestrel. "I banded a male kestrel, #1893-44052, as a 20-day-old nestling on 20 July 2021 near Bozeman, Montana," says AKP partner Paulette Epple of the Sacajawea Audubon Society. "Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza of the Universidad Veracruzana then contacted me to let me know that one of his students captured the same bird on 8 February 2023 near the city of Tlaxcala in Mexico, approximately 2,000 miles away! I’ve always wondered where our local birds spend their winters, and now I know where at least one migrated to." Blood and feather samples were taken, and the kestrel was quickly released with a clean bill of health.
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Two AKP partners used a band recapture to identify one kestrel's long-distance migration from the box in Montana where it hatched to a winter destination in southern Mexico (left). Two other partners teamed up to recover a GPS unit that revealed a detailed picture of another kestrel's travels within and between her wintering grounds in Texas and breeding territory in Kansas. | Map produced with Google Earth
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Got a cool kestrel story to share? We wanna hear it, and other kestrel fans probably do too! Send us an email at kestrelpartnership@peregrinefund.org and let us know what kestrel-tastic things are happening in your world.
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Second Member Joins AKP Outreach Team
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Meet Jessica Schlarbaum! Schlarbaum is the new Public Information Officer for our parent organization The Peregrine Fund, and as part of her duties, we've roped her into joining the AKP's outreach team. For the last few years, The Peregrine Fund’s Digital Content Manager Matthew Danihel has handled the vast majority of our public outreach efforts, but with some exciting changes currently in the works (we hope to be able to share details soon!), we saw a need to bring in a second person to help answer emails, Facebook comments & messages, and other communications.
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Back in 2018–2019, Jessica Schlarbaum contributed data as an AKP partner that she gathered during her graduate research. Now she's a member of the AKP team! (And since we know people are gonna ask—no, that cool shirt is no longer available, and yes, we're way overdue to create another one.) | Photo courtesy of Jessica Schlarbaum
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Schlarbaum may be new to the AKP team, but she’s not new to the AKP. "I worked with the AKP to establish a kestrel nest box program in the Central Valley of CA in 2018 for my M.S. thesis at UC Davis,” she shares. “I originally set out to examine the diet of American Kestrels in different agricultural habitats. But as is common in the scientific world, things didn’t go as planned: about 70% of the nest boxes immediately showed evidence of European Starling activity. So, when life gives you starlings… study them!”
Many kestrel box programs seek to limit the impact of these problematic invasive songbirds, and Schlarbaum tested five different methods in search of the most effective. Her research, which landed her in the Spring 2018 issue of our newsletter as our featured partner, was recently published in the Journal of Raptor Research’s special American Kestrel edition.
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As the name implies, European Starlings are not native to North America, and are therefore not protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This means that unlike other potential "squatters" such as screech-owls, woodpeckers, or bluebirds, box monitors can attempt to exclude starlings if they wish. | Photo by Jessica Schlarbaum
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After graduation, Schlarbaum found herself drawn to the education side of wildlife conservation, spending three years as Communications & Outreach Manager at the New Mexico Wildlife Center. But the love of kestrels never went away, so when the opportunity to join The Peregrine Fund and the AKP team came up, it was an easy choice. "I'm a little kestrel-crazy and all my loved ones know it," she laughs. "Besides my research in California, I've trained five different ambassador kestrels over the years for education programs. I have an American Kestrel tattoo, too many kestrel t-shirts (see above), and artwork of kestrels literally all over my house."
Yeah… she’s gonna fit in great.
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Partner Spotlight: Kirstin Chapman
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One fateful day in 2012, Kirstin Chapman happened to glance out her kitchen window and noticed a bird that she had never seen before—a bold mix of blue and orange and black and white perched atop a spruce in her backyard. She wouldn’t know until later that she was looking at a male American Kestrel, but she was captivated. “I had never seen anything so spectacularly beautiful!” she recounts. And thus, a love affair of 11 years and counting had begun.
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Community scientist Kirstin Chapman, an AKP partner since our earliest days in 2012, coordinates the burgeoning Arvada Kestrel Project in Arvada, Colorado. | Photo courtesy of Kirstin Chapman
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Chapman, who lives in a suburban neighborhood in Arvada, Colorado, was immediately hooked. “I came across the AKP website while I was trying to learn more about kestrels, and it was there I learned I could build my own nest box!” she relates. “My yard backs up to a public park and natural open space with scattered trees—perfect kestrel habitat—so I hoped that since I’d spotted one in my backyard, perhaps I could entice one to nest here too.” She installed a box in her backyard later that year and registered it in the then-nascent AKP database. “I didn’t have kestrels the first year because of epic three-way battles between kestrels, European Starlings, and Northern Flickers, but the kestrels won out the following year,” she reports happily. “I’ve had a family of kestrels every year since!”
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It might not look that impressive at first glance, but this unassuming backyard box is among the most productive in our entire database. It's hosted a successful kestrel nest for an impressive 10 straight years! | Photo by Kirstin Chapman
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The box’s close proximity to her house allows Chapman to get to know her kestrel tenants’ lives on an intimate level every year. “I get to see mating, the adults dive-bombing hawks and Blue Jays, food deliveries, fledglings practicing their flying, almost anything that happens in or around the box,” she explains. “Taking a deep dive into the lives of my backyard American Kestrel family just really excites the community scientist in me. Luckily my human family can fend for itself, because during nesting season I spend very little time doing anything besides watching the box!"
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Three years ago, Chapman's son bought her an infrared nest camera from the company Green Backyard. The camera hooks directly to her router and streams to her iPad, allowing her to check in on the box’s occupants 24/7. “That’s when I REALLY started going ga-ga for kestrels,” she laughs. | Photo by Kirstin Chapman
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Chapman’s affinity for these tiny falcons—and her involvement in kestrel conservation—has only continued to grow. Since 2022, she’s worked with another AKP partner, Jennifer Redmond of the Colorado Avian Research & Rehabilitation Institute (CARRI), to band the adults and nestlings in her box. This paid immediate dividends when Chapman was able to identify that the same adult female returned to her backyard box this spring. She also shares photos, videos, and stories from her box and across the kestrel-verse to her project’s steadily-growing Facebook group, which has inspired several followers to build and monitor kestrel boxes of their own. And in perhaps the biggest advancement to date, a grant from Colorado Field Ornithologists allowed her to add three new boxes on city open space just last month, including the one pictured below.
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“We’ve had so much development in our area over the last 20 years, but there are still places around the city where kestrels could thrive," says Chapman. "I’m hoping if these first few boxes are successful, it might encourage the city to install more. And I’m also hoping this project will help people in my city understand how we can use kestrels as natural rodent control." | Photo courtesy of Kirstin Chapman
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Chapman’s efforts exemplify the many ways in which AKP partners can contribute to kestrel conservation: monitoring nest boxes and submitting data, yes, but also photography, education, and even merely sharing an appreciation of these pint-sized predators can have incredible impact. “I feel so fortunate that I looked out that window and just happened to see that first kestrel all those years ago,” Chapman concludes. “I’ve had so many amazing experiences, and it makes me very happy to spread kestrel love in the world.”
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As the calendar year 2023 nears its end, we’re yet again blown away by the commitment to kestrel conservation displayed by our partners. Your contributions have already broken several of the AKP’s yearly program records and have us poised to break several more with a few more weeks of data submission to go. We can’t thank you all enough, and we’re beyond excited to see what new heights we’ll reach together in 2024.
With best wishes,
AKP Staff and Interns
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