American Kestrel nest boxes

[BlueTiercel]

This thread will be to discuss the making, maintanence and observation of kestrel nest boxes. All information will be shared to promote nesting success of American Kestrels.

[BlueTiercel]

Hey all, thanks Weasel for this section in your forum. Anyone that has talked to me knows I am a hardcore kestrel and raptor nut and love to build and maintain nest boxes for kestrels. I started last year and altough i got my boxes up very late i had a pair in one of my 3 boxes. unfortunaltly those eggs did not hatch, not sure why. I was blessed to be able to watch a pair nearby nesting in a natural flicker cavity fledge 5 young kestrels. After those five had fledged I could often count nine kestrels from were i watched, all actively hunting, chasing each other mantling over mice taken from mom and dad and i also saw a young tiercel catch his first mouse just hours out of the nest! You should have heard him kle, kle kle kle! WEll as you can see, i am into this More in my next post.

[BlueTiercel]

The first thing to know about kestrel nest box maintenance is where to put them. Kestrels are perch hunters and prefer open spaces such as farm land , median strips, telephone power lines, etc. If you see a kestrel in an area a few times chances are this is a good place to put a nest box.

NEST BOX MATERIAL-
Nest boxes should be built of wood at least 3/4 inches thick. A box can be built from one 8 foot piece of 1 by 10 lumber. I have also used all sorts of stuff in the construction of my boxes. Rough cut pine, rough cut cedar, finished pine, plywood, cedar logs, etc. Their is no need to paint or stain cedar as is contains oils that preserve it. Plywood should always be painted as it seperates when wet. also some woods will soak up water, this sems to happen with older pine. I built some great boxes out of weatherd pine and discovered they were soaking water up like a sponge when rained on; the wood is not rotten either. so i have stained them and also my newer pine ones to prevent that down the road.

PLANS-
Plans can be obtained at this link although i have made various modifications to my own boxes. birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse/bhbasics/boxamke.pdf
The 3 inch diameter entrance hole is to big and many people who know a lot more than me tell me this as well. i have recently changed all of my nest box entrances to 2.5 inches. Kestrels do not excavate their own cavities of course and rely on caivty nesters like Northern Flickers to excavate cavities for them. Kestrels and flickers are also very close in size. Since i have never seen a flicker cavity witha hole bigger than 2.5 inches i think this is ideal. Also i have seen photos of Kestrels entering boxes intended for flickers with 2.5 inch entrance holes. What importance is there in using a smaller entrance? Well, any bird bigger than a kestrel will not be able to enter he box, hopefully this also makes it harder for a hungry raccon or cat to get their paws far into the box, etc. also i feel a top opening box is not a good design. This provides more chances for leaks at the hinge area and also you have to be higher up to check and clean the box at the end of the nesting season. I make mine a front opening box by cutting my front 2 inches smaller and putting it betwen the two sides and attaching it with a nail on either side tha acts as a pivot point. Keep the box wired shut by putting a nail or screw in th botom of the "door" and in the floor behind it. Wrap the wire around these two posts.

PLACEMENT AND MOUNTING-
. Boxes should be placed at least 10 feet high. Somepeople will say you can place them that high and then move them down alittle in following years but i think a box at least ten feet high is more out of harms way. It is lesslikely to becoema target for coon, cats, passerbys etc. I mount mine around 14 feet facing east. The importance of this is argued. i fugure the kestrels will get the warming rays of the morning sun and by the time it gets really hot out they are in the shade. However having a box face away from traffic if near a road or having it face open area is just as, if not more important .
a note about mounting the boxes. I suggest that you have someone along to help you with this a kestrel nest box is fairly heavy and large and a real pain in the ass to ount on your own, especially if you don't own a cordless drill. If possible have a friend help you and use two ladders. One holds the box while another attaches it.

Depending on where you live boxes should be up from february to April. I plan on haiving all of mine up before the birds arrive. They ussually start to show up when the ground is bare again although my wife has seen one the past two days and we have lots of snow. Avoid painting the boxes bright colors which are unnatural and attract to much attention(predators, people) or dark colors which heat up easier. This link is features of agood nest box. IT is pretty spot on. birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse/bhbasics/goodbox.html
I have not provided any of the crazy predator foils as many of mine are on telephone poles though flashing wrapped around the post starting at 5 feet will provide good protection. Good luck!

[BlueTiercel]

More American Kestrel Natural History. I may have mentioned this before but kestrels are secondary cavity nesters which means that they cannot excavate their own cavites. Many people cut down dead trees that flickers and other birds rely on to excavate their nests in.
My interst in building nest boxes began when after talking to older people, including a long time falconer who mentioned that he used to see many more kestrels in years back. As i stated before this slow decline is due to a lack of a nesting cavities. I encourage anyone who cares about kestrels to think about providing a nest box for a pair in their area. Yu don't have to make it into an ever growing "nest box trail" as I am doing. One well placed nest box can provide a nesting cavity to be used by kestrels for many years. (This is turning into one of those sally Struthers commericals...) for the price of a cup of coffee or a newspaper , you can give kestrels a home!!!! You people say you love hawks!!! Prove it you uncaring suburbanites!!You are all so callous!!! (at this point Bluetiercel has broken down and is sobbign in apool of his own tears on the floor) Oh, sorry. Yes...boxes can be assembled by anyone who can operate some kind of saw and a drill. If this moron can do it, so can you. Hope i have guilted somone into accepting Jesus, i mean building a kestrel nest box. Thank you.

[Tiercel78]

My sponser has about 8 or so boxes up around my area. I plan on helping him band the youngsters this summer. Those boxes are very important to those birds in our area. When he took some down for repairs after the Hurricanes. The kestrels seemed lost without them and where seen hanging around the spots where the boxes where. I remember one little tiercel was so happy when we put them back up. That he sat above us (about 20ft) on the powerline waiting for us to finish. He was so proud after we where done he sat on that box like he was on top of the world. This was a box that was used for the last 10yrs and from what i've been told has produced young every year.

[Falcon (I)]

I would do it except there are no Kestrels in my Area and ont know where they would be

[Minca]

Falcon said:

I would do it except there are no Kestrels in my Area and ont know where they would be

Kestrel nest boxes happen to be very similar, if not almost the same, as Screech Owl next boxes, which would simply be put in a different habitat. Do some research, Falcon, I'm sure you will find that you have some sort of small cavity nesting raptor down there that would use one. If you can climb trees, or know someone that can, you can also put up platforms for hawks to start nests on. There's a guy up here in Seattle that put up a platform starter nest in a tree on the edge of his property to attract Bald Eagles. Here it is illegal to develope land within a certain distance of a Bald Eagle nest and he was attempting to prevent development on the property next to him (cunning man). It worked, and the eagles have been using the nest they built on that platform for years. There are alot of things you can do to help raptors find places to nest. If you get creative I'm sure you can come up with something.

[BlueTiercel]

Thank you Falcon, Tiercel 78, and Minca for your responses. As
Zach showed us in his post, nest boxes are very important to kestrels. I am glad to see people are interested! Hopefully getting soem of the boxes up this weekend. I will post on how that goes. I will be having a friend help me. Perhaps after seeing the habitat they reside in and seeing kestrels using the boxes he willknow of more places to place boxes or build some himself. Thank you. Carl

[Falcon (I)]

Yeah we do have Nankeen Kestrels apparently the largest Kestrel in the world, but I cant seem to find them they also nest in cavities of dead trees and like teircel said the dead trees get removed. Because I live in Surburbia I would be worried about the danger of cats if I ever put a nestbox up.

[BlueTiercel]

The solution to cats is to put aluminum flashing around the post the box is mounted on. You want to start it about 5 feet high so they cant jump over it. I would think a 3 foot strip of flashing would stop just about any cat. Do not put any percehes on the outside of he box and make sure their is a decent overhang as well, this also help discourage pedators that may be sitting on top of the box. With a big over hang they cant reach down to the entrance. I would imagine where you live is pretty hot so make sure you have it facing east and provide ventilation holes or slots in the top corners of he sides. So of my earlier posts contain link that shw good features of a birdhouse. Good luck!

[BlueTiercel]

Hey again. i have been talking to a guy in oregon who maintains very many nest boxes and i have learned some valuable information. It turns out that having a good layer of wood chips in the nest box is VITAL to nesting success. AS you may recall in one of my earlier posts i mentioned that the 3 eggs did not hatch. in that box I had a scant amount of wood chips...nest failure. In a study involving two dozen kestrel pairs 12 were given cavities with 2 inches of chios and eachg pair fledged some young. The othre 12 were provided boxes with only 50 percent of the floor covered by chips. The result...TOTAL NESTING FAILURE for all 12 pairs. i have also filled all of my drainage holes except for the little notches on the corners. I have never seen any evidence of water leaking into my boxes and feel that draft around the eggs is a bigger hazard than the tiny amount of water that may enter the box.

To summarize make sure you provide a good bed of chips to simulate an abandoned flicker cavity. Again, kestrels do not provide any nesting material as they are falcons and have evolved as secondary nesters in flicker and woodpecker cavities which contain wood chips as nesting material. I am sure that a kestrel could hatch eggs in a straw nest as well but wood chips are the prefered material.

[BlueTiercel]

K birds areback in numbers as of April 1st. i have seen birds in two of my boxes and hopefully will have 4 more up by next weekend. Go for it people i got birds in the only two i have erected in my area!

[Tiercel78]

Here are some of the babies that we banded today. Sponser is Sub-permitted to band and usally does these boxes every year. The kestrels were pretty calm about the whole thing which was surprizing. The only bad thing was that the first time we checked them there was four youngsters. Well.. y'all know how Nature works . We also had some Screech owls in two of the kestrel boxes. the Hens were pretty easy to catch sense they were asleep. One of the Hens was a baby from last year. I didn't know that they reached breeding age that quick.

[BlueTiercel]

Cool pics man! I have 4 young in one and 5 eggs which i am sure have hatched by now in another. I had a pair in the third but a grey squirrel stole the box. So i put up another box 100 yards from that and they are checking that one out. Box 4 i am pretty sure is now occupied as well just need to go check on it soon.

[BlueTiercel]

I have young in the two boxes now and eggs in the other two. anyway, more boxes being built when i find the time. Any more news on yoursa tiercel78?