2023 was another record-breaking year for Madison Audubon’s Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring Program. With 228 boxes spread over 12 counties, these small, but fierce, falcons had plenty of cavities to choose from.
Photo by Madison Audubon
2022 American Kestrel Monitoring and Banding: It Took a Village
Kestrel Nest Box Program 2021
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
Madison Audubon's Kestrel Nest Box Program - 2020 Update
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
American Kestrels: 2019 adult banding results
I am glad that it has warmed up and that it is time to band kestrels! Thirty volunteers for Madison Audubon’s Kestrel Nestbox Monitoring Program were busy in March cleaning out kestrel boxes, and we’re now seeing the results of their work. This nestbox program has two primary goals: 1) provide clean, abundant nest sites for kestrels to raise their young, and 2) create opportunities to band both adults and chicks to study their migration patterns, demographics, nesting preferences, and more.
Photo by Jim Stewart
