The American kestrel is the smallest falcon in North America, in 2013, Delaware listed it as a state endangered species.
The following year, DNREC began installing nesting boxes statewide to help the species rebound after its sharp decline in numbers.
The Delaware Kestrel Partnership is a group of organizations that came together in 2016 to monitor American kestrel nesting boxes across the state.
Jordan Brown is the Raptor, Grassland, and Forest Bird Biologist for the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife. She says the partnership, led by DNREC, is able to monitor about 60-70 nest boxes each year.
“This was in an effort to better understand kestrels in Delaware,” explained Brown. “Their breeding success, their migrating or dispersal patterns, as well as any concerns that we might have for their decline and reasons that they could be declining and conservation actions that we could be taking as a state to move forward.”
The partnership has not been able to pinpoint a reason for the kestrel’s decline, and Brown says there’s likely more than one - so the partnership is looking at factors such as habitat loss and change, pressures of other predatory species, and environmental contaminants.
Since the partnership started, kestrel numbers have remained stable. However, numbers reported in Delaware primarily reflect kestrels in the 60-70 boxes monitored each year, many of which are in New Castle County.
The Partnership hopes to expand into Kent and Sussex Counties, and Brown says interested landowners can help make that happen.
“The program would take care of the installation, the maintenance and the monitoring- or the landowner could be involved as they’d like. They could build the nest box, they could install it, they could monitor it themselves and report back to us,” said Brown. “It’s very much whatever the landowner would like in terms of involvement. But they can also apply on that website where it says ‘volunteer with us’ and fill out a form.”
Brown points interested parties to de.gov/kestrels to get more information or learn how to sign up for the program.
And for those who would like to help but can’t host a nesting box, reporting kestrel sightings to www.eBird.organd reporting leg bands to the banding bird lab can aid the partnership in looking at kestrel numbers both inside and outside of the nesting box program.
