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! ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. 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]