Week 3 – American Kestrel

Being a graduate student in the Raptor Biology department at Boise State University has its perks. While I sit at my desk attempting to write my thesis on wintering raptors in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, I get to help other graduate students conduct their field work. This week I accompanied a fellow graduate student out for a cold day of winter trapping American kestrels. She is banding kestrels with alpha-numeric color bands to determine what proportion of the wintering population in Boise sticks around to breed in the spring and summer (among many other interesting questions). We only caught 4 individuals this particular day but were able to observe some kestrels foraging. One female ignored our mouse-baited trap entirely and dove in front of us to pluck a different small mammal from a roadside ditch. After successfully capturing her prey she brought it back onto an old fence post to consume right in front of us! If you look at the picture closely you can observe the grey mammal (a mouse or a vole) with it’s pink hind-feet under the bird.

See the other 52-week project photos on Flickr or the Wild Lens blog.