NorthernAplomadoFalcon_NestsandNestlings_KeddyHector_Dean_AustinTX_7June2022_Reel4111.mp3

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:00:00] The Peregrine Fund figured out that you could condition birds to nest in these platforms, which are basically a, it's like a square platform with a similarly square roof, up on a post, or more than one post.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:00:16] And then with bars, vertical bars around the perimeter. I think three sides. But, too narrow for birds, larger birds like caracaras, or great-horned owls, or red-tailed hawks, or white-tailed hawks to enter, but, but big enough so that aplomado falcons could enter.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:00:35] So a real simple solution.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:00:37] It's interesting to kind of contrast the situation in south Texas with what you have in eastern Mexico, in tropical Mexico, where most of the nests they use (falcons don't build their own nests; they are dependent upon other birds to build stick nests). Or in eastern Mexico they can nest in bromeliads, these big arboreal, you know, they've got really lush bromeliads. I think rarely they nest on cliffs, if they can find a stick platform there.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:01:03] But they're very dependent upon these nest sites that they don't make.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:01:08] And in the tropics, you know, they can find suitable nest sites pretty high off the ground. They can drop into live oaks and other tree species. We had some nesting in big silk cottons that were probably old rainforest trees, you know, left standing by themselves out in the pasture. You'd have a nest, you know, 40 feet off the ground. Or, gosh, there was one that I climbed up to, in, gosh, right on the banks of the Rio Usumacinta, where Campeche and Tabasco come together. It was on the top of like a 40-foot tall fan palm. And, you know, no ground predator's going to be able to do much with a nest like that.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:01:44] But in Texas, you've got, especially at one point they were finding nests literally in shrubs, a foot or two off the ground, on Matagorda Island, and, or low in mesquites, in stick nests built by another species like a white-tailed kite or Harris hawk or something, or in a yucca. And it turned out the nests in yuccas have real low predation rates; the other nests have high predation rates.

Dean Keddy-Hector [00:02:07] And so you kind of get an indication of what might be a limiting factor there at the northern limit of the distribution. And then you surmount that problem with an artificial nest site that eliminates at least essentially all forms of predation of nestlings.