This topic is one I find interesting, mainly because i've heard little about it before, nor have I noticed any decline in Kestrels over my lifetime. Granted, I have not kept any records untill recently as to how many Kestrels I'm seeing. This is a special bird to me, since its one of the first one's I learned, my dad was always pointing out the "Falco sparvarius" to me as we drove from place to place. They are very fun to watch these little raptors. Maybe a reason I have not thought of any declines is a result of where I bird the most. I probably spend most of my time birding around north central Ohio, around my home driving to Mt. Vernon or Sunbury, and cruising around Killdeer Plains area. These seem to be strongholds for the Am. Kestrel. We have a pair nesting in a Barn down the street that we own. Its not un-common as I drive these areas to notice apparent pairs of Kestrels strung out down the powerlines in what seem to be reasonable territories. Cooper's Hawks are much less commonly seen, although we do have one that tries to raid our yard from time to time. Number's wise, I think that in the 30 mile radius around my house where I drive I know of 9 pairs of Kestrels, but these are only the ones I see on the 4 major roads I take, and I'm reasonably certain there are more. But this is rural habitat and this seems to be the Kestrels preference based on my observations, I rarely see Kestrels near large cities or suburbs, I do occaisionally, but it is not the norm. This is an excellent application of the Breeding Bird Atlass I think, since once all the numbers come in for more areas we can assess the damages so to speak. Personally I am not sure I see a strong correlation between bird-feeders and a decline of Kestrels, since as has been my experience during my life, I have never seen many Kestrels ever in suburbs or the city. Perhaps in the 20 years i've been looking for these birds , the Cooper's were already making a dent in their populations. But when I used to live in Worthington, I almost never saw a Cooper's Hawk, and we always had bird-feeders up. These issues being discussed here by myself and others are all a bit biased and are only personal observations. They do not quite qualify as a systematic and focused scientific study. These questions would be best addressed in actual research of the different factors affecting the percieved decline. One other player in this mess could be West-Nile virus, but I know this year at least was not an outbreak year for this virus. This virus hits the top predators much harder than it does passerines etc. Anyways, Thanks goes out to those individuals I know who care about these birds enough to put up nest boxes for them, from what I've heard from folks like Dick Tuttle (nesting box champ, haha) this year was a good one for the breeding pairs in boxes in the areas he operates. Perhaps more could be done with nest boxes for Kestrels, the loss and competition of nesting cavites by starlings and habitat loss seems to me to be a big factor. It may be just that you don't hear about it as much, but I think Kestrels could use help here in the order of that which has been given to Eastern Bluebirds and nest boxes (of course Blue birds have less well defined large ranges, so Kestrel boxes can't be as closely spaced). Well thats just my partially informed, and slightly biased two-cents worth. Enjoy the birds everyone! = Ben Warner Sunbury Ohio ________________________________________________________________________ Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]