{"id":18077,"date":"2013-09-05T04:00:25","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T10:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18077"},"modified":"2013-09-05T05:43:42","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T11:43:42","slug":"whats-happening-to-our-kestrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/05\/whats-happening-to-our-kestrels\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Happening To Our Kestrels?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve been reading some disturbing reports about the decline of the American Kestrel in North America.\u00a0 And I’m talking about a drastic<\/em> decline!\u00a0 I’ve speculated about just that in a\u00a0previous post, based on my own recent observations in northern Utah but I’ve been hoping that what I’ve noticed is only a local and temporary phenomenon.\u00a0 Apparently it isn’t…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There are reports (see link<\/a>)\u00a0from apparently reliable sources that the numbers of kestrels in the Yukon Territory of Canada are down by about 90% over the past decade and that they have declined\u00a0roughly 65% in North America overall.\u00a0 To say that I find this disturbing is an understatement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been photographing birds seriously for about seven years and kestrels have always been one of my highly preferred subjects (this is one of my earlier kestrel images, taken on 12\/31\/07).\u00a0\u00a0Last night\u00a0I quickly\u00a0reviewed how many\u00a0 kestrel shots I’ve saved in each of those\u00a0years and the number has declined\u00a0dramatically during that time.\u00a0 I’m simply not seeing them nearly as often as I used to.\u00a0 I’m now fairly convinced that the decline in kestrel numbers\u00a0I’m seeing echoes what is apparently going on in the rest of North America.<\/p>\n

The American Kestrel Partnership is compiling a database to investigate the source of the problem but some researchers already\u00a0suspect the decline is due to climate change or chemicals in the environment.\u00a0 I hope they figure it out quickly.\u00a0 The optimist in me (a character that is deeply buried in my psyche and doesn’t emerge often) hopes that\u00a0we’ll have the same success with this problem as we did with the disastrous effects of DDT causing eggshell thinning in many raptors.\u00a0\u00a0 Since DDT was banned in many countries, birds like Bald Eagles and Osprey have made a dramatic comeback.\u00a0 Maybe we can come up with a magic\u00a0bullet for the kestrel…<\/p>\n

Many\u00a0of my readers are kestrel aficionados and I’m very curious to know\u00a0if others have noticed this apparent reduction in kestrel numbers.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve been reading some disturbing reports about the decline of the American Kestrel in North America. And I’m talking about a drastic decline! I’ve speculated about just that in a previous post, based on my own recent observations in northern Utah but I’ve been hoping that what I’ve noticed is only a local and temporary phenomenon. Apparently it isn’t. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[340,334],"tags":[28,1640,1641,628,1638,131,1642,311,1639],"class_list":["post-18077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","tag-american-kestrel","tag-american-kestrel-partnership","tag-climate-change","tag-ddt","tag-decline","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-organophosphates","tag-utah-2","tag-yukon-territory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/american-kestrel-8176-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Hz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}