Landscapes That Promote Nest Box Occupancy in American Kestrels in Massachusetts

American Kestrel populations in the northeast have been decreasing steadily. MassWildlife has installed over 100 nest boxes in Massachusetts in order to aid in the conservation of kestrels. This project studied landscape features surrounding the nest boxes to better understand variables that contributed to nest box occupancy. We used in depth analysis of land cover with ArcMAP and quantitative analysis of basic landscape features, including Spearman Rank Correlations and Akaike’s Information Criterion, to help refine the criteria for nest box occupancy amongst American Kestrels so that we could recommend future nest box placement to MassWildlife