Kestrel Banding

by Casey Jones, June 2026

Perhaps George Costanza would support my future in hand modeling.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a BRPA Member’s home to participate in banding some American Kestrel nestlings. Five of ‘em!

This Member participates in the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance’s Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring and Banding Program (https://swibirds.org/kestrels). It’s no surprise that, like most birds, kestrel populations have rapidly declined. A simple suitable nesting box helps to mitigate that.

There are some great articles at the bottom of that page (link above). I think everyone (except maybe small animals) would commend this good work being done by the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. Some, more contemplative, small animals might also agree that these eventually-pretty predators do, in fact, benefit their own species population.

There they are in the bottom of the nest box a day or two before they were banded.

That’s me with Emma.

And, there they go! Thirteen (13) days after banding the birds, they’ve fledged.

I’ve now had the special privilege of holding the littlest falcon in North America, the littlest owl in the Eastern United States and I’ve held a hummingbird too.

I would (and do) encourage everyone to find any opportunity to look at birds. Looking at them through magnifying glass is pretty good. Looking at them through Vortex optics is really good.

Studying them in your hand — and without lenses and mirrors — is something special. Such opportunities are not as easy to find unless you happen to live near a confluence of conservation organizations in the middle of an ancient mountain range.

The Baraboo Hills Ecology Collective (https://bhrcollective.org/) offers several such educational opportunities and I would strongly encourage you to attend one of their events in the future.

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