May 2021 Kestrel Update

Dear Community Conservation partners, Since mid-April FoHVOS has been keeping a close eye on its 50 American Kestrel nest boxes. Each year we maintain and monitor boxes situated in grassland habitats throughout the Hopewell Valley as part of our project to recover the population of this state-threatened Falcon in our region. You may have seen some of these boxes while hiking in places like Mercer Meadows, St. Michael’s Farm Preserve, the Watershed Reserve, or Fiddler’s Creek Preserve.

With the kestrel season just beginning, we are happy to report the following:

As of mid May, we have nine boxes with nesting kestrels and this may increase as the season progresses. Several of the boxes were used by kestrels last year, but four of them are being used by kestrels for the first time. We had nine occupied boxes in 2020, so we have already reached that in 2021 and may exceed it as the spring goes on.

We are very excited that our program is doing so well. We would like to give a special thanks to all our kestrel monitoring volunteers who work so hard to check on our boxes. If you would like to be a kestrel box monitor, please email bcraighead@fohvos.org. We will have more updates soon.