Bird Watching: Daily Bird Pictures, Volume 459, 1 by Chillybean

Chillybean wrote:
Not the best picture, but our Kestrel is still here, so is still finding food. This winter is finding fewer mice getting into the house. YAY! She has perched on our new box a time or two, so might stay here long enough for a male to come. But then the old female may come too and there could be a dispute.

Maybe I talked about this in another thread. The past two years we had a pair of Kestrels take over the nesting box. Both summers eggs were laid, but never hatched.

We live out in the country and placed our first Kestrel box on a corner post next to the road, since the county roads people put up boxes along the roads like that. We are thinking there's ten to twenty feet between the edge of the road and fence line. Our road is gravel, so not as heavily used. We wonder if that was the problem; the Kestrels couldn't get used to our traffic. They would always fly off when a vehicle passed by.

Because we have good habitat, two hatch year Kestrels (male and female) were released here in late July. They were from different nests, but had each fallen out too soon for some reason. The rehabilitator kept them until they were older The male went off elsewhere. I think I read somewhere that during winter they stay in different habitats.

A child built a box a little deeper than the original and we put it further from the road. Only one box is up, since we only had one post.

We've seen her perch on the new box while trucks pass by, and she stays there. Just south of that box is row crop, so I hope that the short times the farmers are there will not disturb any nesting activities. They don't live on that property, so they are there minimally. Tilling, planting, spraying (ugh), and then harvest later in the season.

This last photo shows Kessie's favourite roosting spot, an old Barn Swallows' nest in the three-sided building of ours. (The previous owner used it for his horses.) There is a large pile of pellets and other below this spot. The reason for that board in front is I read some place that you can get more Barn Swallows to nest in a building if you put up dividers. Hasn't worked for us so far. We think Kessie feels safer behind it.