Guests are welcome at the DCBC meeting tomorrow eve-





The Delaware County Bird Club meetings and program presentations take place
on the fourth Monday of each month, September through April, except in
November and December when they are held earlier in the month to accommodate
the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays.  Please join us in the City of
Delaware at the Ohio Wesleyan University, Schimmel- Conrades Science Center,
Room 163.  Conversation and refreshments begin at 7:00 pm; the meetings and
programs start at 7:30 pm.  Parking is available next to the Selby Stadium
on the east side of Henry Street and in the lot south of the Science Center
next to Branch Rickey Arena.



March 28: Dick Tuttle: "EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT AMERICAN
KESTRELS BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK" is an appropriate title for a PowerPoint
presentation that details the adventures and conclusions from the Delaware
County American Kestrel Nestbox Project that has fledged 637 of North
America's smallest falcons since 1995. Dick Tuttle will describe the
project's history from its earliest planning stages, starting in 1991. The
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Litter Control and
Recycling funded a grant awarded to the Delaware General Health District
that was used to convince school children to donate money from recycled cans
to finance the first ten nestboxes. Members of the Delaware County Bird Club
(DCBC) built and painted the boxes and provided five monitors, and the Ohio
Department of Transportation granted permission to attach nestboxes to their
highway signs. By 2000, the project moved from highway signs to electric
poles. Consolidated Electric Cooperative allows 18 boxes to hang from their
utility poles in more rural habitats. Since 1993, when the first ten boxes
were installed, much scientific thought has materialized into proven
management techniques. For example, 17 of 18 nestboxes produced kestrels in
2010. For most of the eighteen seasons that produced kestrels, Dick Phillips
and Dick Tuttle have set out to monitor the project's boxes, every two weeks
or so, from March through August. In 2010 alone, the two retired science
teachers met fifteen times to record data, take photos, and clean and repair
nestboxes along a fifty-mile roadside "trail" in the northwest corner of
Delaware County.

Slides of beautiful adult kestrels, fuzzy white hatchlings, and cute
nestlings with big, dark eyes are promised, but because of the graphic
nature of photos showing cannibalized remains, skeletons of frogs and
lizards, birds' heads, and nest chambers sprayed with fecal whitewash, bring
children to this program, they'll love it!








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