In January, the Audubon Middle for Birds of Prey grew to become a part of a world community for monitoring chicken migration with the set up of a Motus station on our property. As spring migration approached, we awaited the primary “ping” of a chicken passing inside the vary of our station, and on April 3, it occurred: an American Kestrel — the smallest falcon species in North America — grew to become the primary radio-tagged chicken to move inside the station’s vary.
Motus, a program of Birds Canada in partnership with Audubon, is a global collaborative analysis community that makes use of radio telemetry to trace the motion and habits of birds and different small animals, like bats and bugs. There are round three dozen Motus stations throughout Florida, including one at Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, recording any time a tagged animal passes inside seven miles.
The kestrel, an grownup male, was tagged in July 2024 as a part of a analysis mission referred to as American Kestrel Massachusetts, led by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and Mass Audubon. Motus information exhibits the kestrel migrating up and down the East Coast from Massachusetts to Florida annually. In each the 2024-25 and 2025-26 migration cycles, this particular person’s southernmost ping has been recorded at Hobe Sound Nationwide Wildlife Refuge in Martin County, on the southeastern coast of Florida. Its final recorded motion there was on October 11, 2025.
We don’t know the place this kestrel spent its winter — there are a number of Motus stations south of the Hobe Sound location, within the Florida Keys, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico, however none picked up the kestrel’s tracker from October by means of April. Due to the brand new station on the Audubon Middle for Birds of Prey, we all know that it started its spring migration journey in April 2026. It has not but been picked up by one other station on its journey north.
Finding out migration will help scientists reply questions on species in decline and advocate for his or her conservation. The American Kestrel is experiencing a lack of nesting and feeding habitat throughout the nation, and in Florida and a number of other different states, they’re a State-designated Threatened species. By monitoring particular person kestrels’ migration patterns, we are able to establish precisely which elements of our state are essential habitat for them and want safety probably the most.
