Dallas County Conservation Naturalist Mike Havlik and Perry High School biology teacher Molly Norton partnered again this spring for a day of kestrel banding in north-central Dallas County.
With the help of a dozen PHS sophomore biology students and the expert advice of Mark Bowman, a volunteer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Amy Geffre, a Ph.D. student from Iowa State University, Havlik and Norton made a systematic survey of all the kestrel boxes between Forest Park Museum in Perry and the Voas Nature Area near Minburn.
This year’s numbers were encouraging, Havlik said.
“We banded 12 kestrels,” he said. “Two of them were male, which I think is nice to know that both the males and females incubate eggs.”
The majority of the bird houses are located along County Road P58.
“We counted 78 eggs, so most nests had four or five eggs,” Havlik said. “We had some birds that got away. We had some birds that we didn’t band, and we had some that we were too loud and they flew off, but we still counted their eggs, so we documented 78 eggs in 16 nests.”
The American kestrel population across the U.S. is down 47 percent, but in Iowa the birds have increased their numbers by 19 percent, Havlik said. This increase is due to man-made nesting boxes placed around the state. More than 750 boxes were attached to the back of road signs along U.S. Interstate 35 in Iowa several years ago.
The Dallas County Conservation Department has maintained boxes in the county for several years, and last year the PHS AP biology class made six new ones to replace the worn boxes and add new boxes.
Havlik said similar programs are underway in Boone County and Madison County.
To help with project, students in the Perry Middle School shop class made 40 as part of a mass-production learning project. When these boxes are placed around the county, it will greatly help one of Iowa’s most handsome birds of prey: the American kestrel.
