 and welcome to In the Studio. I'm your host, Matt Blake, and today we're talking about bird boxes. What are they? Why would you build one? Where should they go? Who will live in them? All sorts of questions. And over the next 15 minutes, we'll be exploring those. I do have a guest today who's gonna tell us more about bird boxes. Jessica Schlarbaum, thank you for joining me in the studio. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. So, you know more about bird boxes than I do. I hope. Enlighten me. So, I focus mainly on kestrel boxes, but in my experience, I've worked with songbird boxes and owl boxes as well. There are a lot of programs focusing on songbird boxes and barn owl boxes in Davis. So, there is a Pooda Creek songbird nest box project going on with UC Davis Fish and Wildlife Museum. And they essentially go around to all these boxes and monitor these boxes for different types of songbirds. And there's a lot of barn owl boxes around Davis. If you haven't heard them screaming at you downtown from overhead, they're all over dispersed. And so, I'm hoping to get a lot of kestrel boxes around Davis. There don't seem to be many projects focusing on them. And so, I really wanna get that going. All right, and I heard that you have recently built very, quite a collection of kestrel boxes. I actually haven't personally built them. I had a lot of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Nature Clubs built me these boxes for me. So, I really wanna incorporate as much educational aspect I can in public outreach. So, I've had about three different Boy Scout troops and a Girl Scout troop and Center for Land-Based Learning in Sacramento. And they built me 80 boxes total. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. And where do you put them up around town? Where do they go and how do you put them up? I have a great network of property owners surrounding me in the Central Valley. So, we have a couple farms and winters that are allowing me to use their properties. I have a winery and a Spartow and I'm using Prairie City SVRA Off-Road Vehicle site in Sacramento. And they're all amazing, allowing me to install these boxes and come out twice a week. And as you can see, I have a lot of boxes out there and this picture is me with about half the boxes after they had been built. And then that was the first box I installed actually at a button in Turkovich Farms in winters. And there's me installing that box. And so, we like to put them up in trees because that would be the natural cavity where they would nest. So, we put them up all on trees and are hoping that we get some kestrels. Excellent. And we are talking about bird boxes today, but for those who don't know, what is a kestrel? So, an American kestrel is the smallest falcon species in North America. They're about this big and you can see my shirt actually has a character of one. And so, this is a shirt from the American Kestrel Partnership and they're a great organization that I'll talk about in a second. But American kestrels are a really small little falcon species, but don't let that fool you. They are incredibly powerful species. They can hunt things almost half their size. They're amazing, powerful creatures. They prefer to be in areas with some short vegetation which is why these farms are ideal for these boxes. That's where they'll hunt. They'll kind of sit up in these telephone poles. And I'm sure a lot of people have seen them kind of on these telephone poles on county roads and they'll just kind of sit there and wait until they see a prey item and they'll dive down and grab it. And so, they're all over North America and even as far south as Argentina in the winter and can go as far north into Canada. All right. And so, prey would be rodents or what else? They're such a generalist predator. They can eat things ranging from voles and mice all the way to small songbirds which is really, really impressive. And they will also go for some really small snakes and dragonflies and moths. And essentially, if you look up like kestrel with prey on Google, you'll see a wide variety of images with different types of prey sticking out of those talons. Okay. And I know a lot of people put up owl boxes and it sounds like maybe kestrel boxes and some others in order to help with pesteradication. Rats and mice and things like that. Yeah, yeah. So the farmers are really, really willing to help me out because essentially these kestrels are helping them. So kestrels are a great pest control method as well as barn owls and even bluebirds in a sense. So bluebirds will consume some small insects and so they can be used as some sort of pest control as well. But barn owls have tended to be the historical pest control for farmers. And I know that there's kind of a program going on where central valley farmers are paired with farmers in Israel because they have been using these barn owls for such a long time for pest control. And they're essentially trying to get these central valley farmers to get more involved in using barn owls for this pest control. Okay, and so it sounds like, and maybe I'm wrong, correct me if I am, but one of the best ways to get one of these birds of prey or a songbird onto your property is to give them some real estate. Exactly. Yeah, so they all nest in cavities and generally that would be natural cavities found in trees. So they're all secondary cavity nesters, meaning they'll occupy a cavity that some other species has already made in a tree. But since central valley is such an agricultural area, there's not a lot of these big trees with holes in them anymore. So that's where the boxes come in specifically. It provides them this nesting habitat that is not available to them. Okay, and so they do nest in these boxes. It's not just like overnight stays, right? Yeah, yeah, and it's actually interesting because there are some studies going on right now looking at barn owls and kestrels. We think they might actually be using them in the winter when it gets really, really cold as a way of just kind of staying warm. And the American Kestrel Partnership actually just posted a picture yesterday of some kestrels that are already occupying their nest cam box. And it's really, really early in the season. So we assume they're probably just trying to stay warm and claim their territory ahead of time before that breeding season starts up. Okay, good. And so are you doing a study specifically or is it just trying to get those bird boxes out there? Yeah, so I'm going to be looking at how the habitat surrounding these boxes affects nest occupancy rates. So especially looking at proximity to these hunting grounds. So a lot of my properties aren't ideal for kestrel hunting. They're wineries, so they have tall kind of vegetation. I'm in an orchard as well. And so we wanna see how far they're willing to go away from that hunting field to nest. So how far they're willing to travel to get that food. And there really hasn't been many studies looking at that and that will kind of lead researchers in the future when they're putting up boxes to know how far they can put these away and still expect a kestrel to occupy it. Okay, and if I wanted to build one, where would I find plants? How do I build a bird box for a kestrel for an owl or anything? Yeah, the American Kestrel Partnership is an amazing organization building boxes, getting partners all over North America. They're connected with a lot of researchers, including myself, and they collect data. So they have plans online of how to build a box, where to put it, how to install it. And also they have a database where you can submit all your data from the boxes you have. And so I'm actually going to be analyzing all that data. So they're providing me with this data since 2012. And so I'm gonna be analyzing all this data from people, researchers like myself, and just people who have one barn, or one kestrel box on their property and just like looking at kestrels. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I know the California Raptor Center here in town has some plans for an owl box, I believe it would be on our website. Yeah, we also have a kestrel box on there, and that's kind of what I used for my design. So this box was based off of the design from the California Raptor Center. And you can see it has an entrance hole at the front, about three and a half inches in diameter. And that is pretty much ideal for a kestrel species. So the entrance hole is kind of what's gonna dictate what species you get. So songbird boxes will have a really, really tiny hole. And they prefer this entrance hole because they can look at that and analyze whether large predators are gonna be able to get in. So a kestrel is able to get into a box this big, but they can look at it and say, I can get in there, but a predator can't, right? And then on top of it, we have an opening hinge for researchers like myself to go and analyze what's going on in the box. So it's a great design, and I would recommend using this design. All right, and right next to your box, it looks like you have something that might have happened inside a box just like that. Exactly, I have a little tiny kestrel egg, and they're very, very small, and it's amazing to know that something so small can create something so large in terms of their body mass. And so they will actually create three to five eggs per year, and they'll lay them every other day. And I think that's about all they can handle because it's a lot of calcium that you're going to be depositing into this egg, and so you don't wanna maximize your calcium deposition in this or else you're gonna lose calcium for your bones. So yeah, so this is a little egg, and I'm hoping to find three to five of these in most of my boxes. Excellent, good luck with that. And then, so if I were living in a city, city of Davis, and I wanted to put up a kestrel box in my backyard, is that somewhere where they might actually be, or are they mostly out on the fields? They're mostly out on the fields, so they don't really tend to go in urban areas, and if you look in the city of Davis specifically, you don't often see them around downtown or campus. They're generally on the outskirts of Davis near the agricultural fields, and that's just kinda what they tend to do. But barn owl boxes are pretty much occupied anywhere you put them. There is a huge population of barn owls in this area, and the occupancy rate on barn owl boxes is a lot higher than kestrel boxes. And same with songbirds, so songbirds can also nest in more urban areas. There's a lot along Pooda Creek Reserve, so if you ever see a little box about this big, pretty much same design as the kestrel box, but a little smaller, they're all really high up in these trees, and so they really like the kinda riparian habitat area. Okay, interesting. And then if you wanted to see a kestrel live and in person, where would you go? California Raptor Center. So we have Kali, our female American kestrel at the Raptor Center, and I actually trained her for the glove, so she's an education bird, and so she comes out at presentations like Open House and Biodiversity Day, and we will have her perch on the glove, and we can show her off to the public and just educate them about kestrel species in general and conservation. And she's an imprinted American kestrel. She was kept illegally as a pet, unfortunately. They brought her to Lindsay Wildlife Museum finally, and then she got transferred over to us, and then I trained her, and she's our beautiful little education bird, and she will likely be right up in the front of her cage where you can see her, and she'll make little trippy noises at you. And I heard she recently became a celebrity. She's on a sweet shirt. Yes, so the California Raptor Center has paired with Float for Love of All Things, which is a great organization, and we have Kali's face in a, what's it called, Warhol Painting-esque design. So we have, oh yes, so we have Kali, the American kestrel up on our screen right now, and she is quite a feisty little girl. But her face, you can get a four panel of her face on your shirt, and it's a great shirt, and some of the proceeds will go to the California Raptor Center. Excellent, very good. Yes, and as a person who has an owl box in my backyard, I can also advise the people at home. So make sure that you follow the instructions about where to mount it, because I did put mine in a tree, because that's what I had available to me. But there's not, you need to keep clearance in the front, otherwise the squirrels will get in and see what's going on, and make a house for themselves, or something like that. Yeah, that is the thing that is unfortunate about providing these boxes, is oftentimes you'll get species you don't want. We do have some invasive species in this area that are cavity nesters. So we have starlings, European starlings, and we have house sparrows, which are not ideal. We don't want them nesting in these boxes, because they are invasive species. We don't want to be increasing that population. So squirrels are also a problem, which I know you said you had a problem with. So it's ideal to mount these on individual posts, as opposed to trees, because the trees do provide a really easy way for the squirrels to get into the boxes. My study is putting them on trees, just because we want to mimic the natural environment as much as possible for my study. But if you're not studying them, I highly recommend putting them on individual posts. And if you were in town and wanted to put them on a post in your backyard, how high up would you go? So with kestrels, you want to mount them at least eight feet, ideally 10 to 13 feet in the air. So they do like being high up. Do you know about owl boxes? Owl boxes are going to be a little bit higher than that. I don't know the exact height, but I just know that any barn owl box I see is a lot higher than the kestrel boxes. And I think that minimum would be 13 feet and then higher, so. All right. So it sounds like there's a lot more information out there. Oh, yeah. On California Raptor website and the American Kestrel website. Yes, uh-huh. And so I encourage you at home if you are thinking about building a bird box or and want to put one up, do so. There's information online. And thank you so much, Jessica, for joining me today. Yeah, of course, thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah.