April 8 -  Sayers: Rebuilding Local Populations of the American Kestrel - One Box at a Time
American kestrels, our smallest falcon, have experienced a dramatic decrease in numbers in the eastern U.S. in the last 30 years.  In 2009, Tom Sayer's life-long interest in birding led him to experiment with putting up 5 kestrel nestboxes in northeast CT as a way of trying to help reverse this decline.  Those first boxes produced 7 nestlings in the first year and Tom was hooked.  He co-founded the Northeast Connecticut Kestrel (NECKP) project with John Stake in 2009.  This presentation will take you from that very first year, with all its mistakes and challenges, up through the 2103 breeding season which saw 64 nestboxes produce 80 nestlings.  Some of the topics covered will be the possible reasons for the American kestrel’s decline, which factors seem to influence the breeding success of the birds, what has been learned about successful nestbox placement, what we have learned from banding and radio telemetry studies with the birds, and the role of the European starling in the breeding success of kestrels.  See Tom's bird photography at www.onthewingbirdphotography.com.