Our American Kestrel Project has completed its 9th season of monitoring and banding! This project was started in 2015 by Frank and Kate Nicoletti, as a way to support this declining raptor by providing nest boxes in a landscape that has few natural opportunities for nesting, but lots of good habitat. A crew of nearly a dozen volunteers monitor 52 kestrel boxes in the Greater Sax-Zim Bog Ecosystem and submit data to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch Portal. Learn more about NestWatch here.
At the end of each season, a report of how the year went is shared on our BogBlog. Below are links to each summary.
Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring in Sax-Zim Bog: A Review
2024: The more we know, the more we don’t know
2023: The Excitement of Returning Birds
2022: Surprises, Successes & Research Implications
2021: A Season of Unexpected Results
2020: Surprises & Milestones
2016-17: How to build a Kestrel Nest Box and the Early Years of Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring in the Bog
Additionally, collected data will be used to publish nesting data on American Kestrels in our area and has been used in a few projects to better understand environmental contaminants, diet and prey composition, and local productivity of American Kestrels. Data gained from Sax-Zim Bog-nesting American Kestrels fitted with transmitters from a partnership with the Minnesota DNR, was recently published and can be found below.
Here is a summary of Halle Lambeau’s Master’s Project: 2023 MOU Paper Sessions Presentation