Several years ago, a pair of American Kestrels occupied a nest box in one of the prairies at Fair Meadows, and I had the opportunity to observe social interactions of their newly fledged young.
Photo by Gary Shackelford
Many records were set in our 2021 Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring program that included 208 nest boxes monitored by 65 volunteers and three banders. Roughly 232 young birds fledged, 160 young were banded, and 41 adults were captured.
Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren
Helping the American kestrel increase its numbers and providing data to the American kestrel Partnership has all the qualities of a good citizen science project for Madison Audubon. Madison Audubon’s volunteers began directly helping kestrels in 1985 when Mark, Sue, and volunteer Greg Geller began erecting kestrel nest boxes at Goose Pond around 1985. The kestrel nest box project really started to take off in 2009 with a coordinator (me) assigned to the project, and then again in 2012 when Mark and Sue ask me to check the nest boxes using a spy camera, a major advancement in the efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring.
Photo by Phil Brown