Banding of Kestrels

I lifted the cover off the large box and peered over the edge. There had been no rustling or other signs of life from inside. What it contained was a mystery, although the little kestrel pair had been perching here and flying about the field for two months. The box was twelve feet high and set in the center of an eight-acre hayfield. It was the jewel in a crown of several smaller houses scattered through the field.

The American kestrel is a rare nester in New England, and becoming rarer every year because of a loss of grasslands. Would this pair nest and raise young in my field? I was about to find out. The insides of the box were coated with a white stucco material, a solid splat from four little eating machines huddled in the bottom of the box staring back at me. Their black eyes shown brightly and no precious opal could have raised my spirits more.

The bird bander had asked me how far along these babies might be, and now I could tell him that they were fully feathered. We arranged for him to visit in five days. He was busy until then climbing up on osprey nests to band their young. Two years ago the young ospreys were dying in the nests for lack of food, but now for the second straight year there is plenty of fish to eat.

The famous peregrine falcons of Springfield were also banded as youngsters and their progeny had received the little metal bracelets when still in the nest. Now these four little kestrels were going to get their numbers too. Compared to the previous times my friend had come to band young goshawks, this was going to be easy. Then a helper had to climb tall trees, dodge diving parents, and grab large frightened birds with strong, sharp talons.

Despite the new radio technologies, the aluminum band affixed to a leg remains the best way to identify birds and discover where they go when they leave the breeding site. You must have a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do this.

There were only three young in the nest when we revisited the box five days later. We placed them in a covered canvas bag and brought them down to be weighed. They were held firmly around the lower body to keep the wings from flapping and inserted into a can head first. Their yellow legs were left sticking out and the band was clamped on. Several times they called loudly, a single repeated note, lac-lac-lac-lac-lac.

Then they were held by those legs in the open and pictures were taken. The colors were striking reds, blues, grays and whites. One had large white spots in the red tail, which the others lacked. Two were males with bluish backs and one was female sporting a barred reddish back. They held themselves upright proudly and spread their wings, sometimes trying to bite the fingers that held them. Then they went back in the box.

One of us had seen the fourth bird fluttering on the ground as we entered the field, so we walked slowly through the mowed edge and the taller hay trying to find it. It took a while, but finally we found another female crouched in the grass.

She weighed 10% less than the others, but was the most feathered and feisty of all, clamping on to a finger with her sharp bill and refusing to let go. Once they leave the nest and start moving around they shed baby fat quickly and the parents are hard pressed to locate their young and keep them fed. This one was not quite ready to be on her own, unable to fly, so we popped her back in the box too.

We had done all we could to help these little falcons. They face a difficult future, since over half of all birds die in the first year. The few bands that are returned when this happens will help tell what are the greatest dangers to their survival, and perhaps we would then know what to do to help them further. Otherwise their fate would remain a mystery, as so much of the life and fate of flying creatures is.