The following article was submitted by Richard Scranton, NCWAS Community Science

Since 2021, the NCW Audubon chapter has monitored American Kestrel nest boxes up on and around the Waterville Plateau. We call it The Richard Hendrick Conservation Project, named after the person who was instrumental in managing it.

In the 1980s, staff at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Northcentral Washington placed kestrel nesting boxes on the Waterville Plateau near Mansfield, Bridgeport, and Brewster to bolster kestrel production. In 1993 Richard joined the WDFW effort as a volunteer. Over time he took on more responsibility for the project by constructing new boxes, cleaning out and maintaining old boxes, monitoring production, and banding young prior to fledging.

Eventually the project became his and remained that way until his passing in December 2020.  Over time his network included more than 250 boxes and over time he banded more than 7,000 birds.

Our Audubon chapter decided to revive this route and we spent the first year (2021) taking steps to make this a successful venture.  The effort included establishing a management team, finding volunteers, mapping box locations, and building boxes to replace those in ill repair or destroyed. 

This spring we are now monitoring over 200 boxes with 35+ volunteers. Late March is the time to ready the boxes for the new crop of Kestrels looking for a place to raise a family.

Four of our boxes contain cameras so that we can watch as the kestrels go from choosing a nest box to laying eggs and rearing young. Two of the boxes have attracted Kestrels with one of them containing 4 Kestrel eggs. The female usually lays 4-6 eggs every other day before incubating them, resulting in all the chicks hatching within 24 hours of each other.

This spring and summer I plan, along with some of the other volunteers, to periodically write about our experiences and update what we are seeing in the camera boxes during the kestrel’s breeding season.  We’ll write about mapping, data, biology, breeding cycle, odd sightings, etc.