Indoor Program – Rebuilding Local Populations of The American Kestrel – One Box at a Time – Tom Sayer

Note:  the yearbook had the wrong date for this talk.  April 20th is the correct date.  We changed from the usual date to not conflict with religious holidays.

Ever since the age of 8 years old, Tom Sayers has spent much of his free time wandering the woods and fields fascinated by the complexity and diversity of the natural world. In 2009, his life-long interest in birds led him to experiment with putting up 5 American Kestrel nestboxes in northeast Connecticut as a way of trying to help reverse the dramatic decline of the threatened American Kestrel. Those first boxes produced 7 nestlings in the first year and resulted in the formation of the Northeast Connecticut Kestral Project (www.nectkestrels.com). This presentation will take you from that very first year, with all its mistakes and challenges, up through the 2016 breeding season. Tom’s presentation includes fascinating video clips of both nestlings and adult birds. 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, radio telemetry, and geolocator studies with the birds, and the role of the European Starling in the breeding success of kestrels.

Please Note: As stated in the Club’s by-laws, the April meeting is traditionally the Annual Meeting, which includes presentation of a slate of officers and their election.