Minor changes in habitat composition can have major impacts on foraging success. Understanding how species use habitat can alter management decisions and improve conservation strategies. The Southeastern American Kestrel (Falco sparverius paulus) is a state-threatened subspecies in Florida and has suffered an 82% population decline in the previous century due in part to fire suppression and loss of nest sites. One of the largest populations of F. s. paulus resides in scrub habitat in Ocala National Forest (ONF), which is intensively managed for pulpwood with treatments including prescribed burns and clearcuts. Little is known of how successfully F. s. paulus forages in scrub habitat. To help understand this we conducted 3-hour long provisioning rate surveys at F. s. paulus nests in scrub habitat across ONF during the 2019 breeding season. We surveyed in stands that varied in vegetation height, pine density, treatment (prescribed burn, clearcut, or wildfire) and size. We used generalized linear models to assess the relationship between environmental covariates and provisioning rate (minutes between each feeding) and the total number of feedings. We ranked models according to AIC values.
Results/Conclusions
Provisioning rate and total number of feedings varied among sites for F. s. paulus. The best ranked model for total number of feedings had a positive relationship with snag density and a negative relationship with pine cover. The best model for provisioning rate showed a negative relationship with snag density, indicating that as snag density increased, the time between each feeding decreased. A variable number of snags are left behind after forest stand treatments. Within our sites we found snag density to range between 0.6 and 33.4 snags/ha. Concurrent research in ONF has found that snag density is also related to occupancy and daily survival rate of F. s. paulus. This research is an important step in showing that it may also be related to foraging success and provisioning rate. These considerations are important for management decisions concerning scrub habitat, and similar research is needed in other F. s. paulus habitat types, such as areas where nest boxes are used.