This meeting will be a “hybrid” – you can attend in-person at the Finch Arboretum, 3404 W. Woodland Blvd. (off Sunset Hwy., just west of downtown Spokane), in the Willow Room of the Woodland Center, or you can attend virtually on-line via Zoom link. Please see the current version of our newsletter for additional information and a link to access the meeting virtually via Zoom.

North Central Washington Audubon’s American Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring Program

Presented by Kent Woodruff, Richard Scranton and Stu Smith

Three members of the North Central Washington (NCW) Audubon chapter will talk about their American Kestrel Nest Box Monitoring Program that currently involves dozens of volunteers and over 180 nest boxes primarily in the Waterville Plateau area of Douglas County.

Kent Woodruff is a retired wildlife biologist who spent most of his 43-year career contributing to public land stewardship in several Western states. His interest in raptors was one way he focused his pursuit of partnerships, mentoring, and environmental education to generate lasting conservation benefit. 

Richard Scranton has served on the NCW Audubon Chapters board for the past 10 years and is the chair for the Community Science and Leavenworth BirdFest projects.

Stu Smith is a bird enthusiast who serves as the kestrel projects data scientist. 

The nest box program is officially called the Richard Kendrick Kestrel Conservation Project in memory of local birder Richard Kendrick (1942 – 2020),. He earned the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Volunteer of the Year award in 2006 for his years of work building, installing and maintaining nest boxes for kestrels and wood ducks in Douglas County, and for banding hundreds of baby kestrels and other raptors.

Kent, Richard and Stu will explain more about that history and program goals to contribute to the productivity and population stabilization of kestrels in north central Washington, to engage volunteers in gathering and sharing data useful to science, and to cooperate with researchers in a study of this population of kestrels. Over the next several years they plan to install a total of about 250 nest boxes in the project area, which is mostly treeless but has lots of mice for prey.

Putting Up a Kestrel Nest Bos