Largely Nocturnal Kangaroo Rats Preyed Upon by Diurnal American Kestrels in New Mexico

As secondary cavity nesters, American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) adapt readily to nest boxes, so most documentations and enumerations of their prey have been from boxes during the approximately 30-d nestling period (Smallwood and Bird 2020). Sherrod (1978), summarizing six North American studies of American Kestrel prey by numbers, not mass, showed that invertebrates (74%) were most often captured, though mammals (16%), birds (9%), and reptiles (1%) were also taken. However, in 2017 at 975 m elevation in the semi-arid southern Great Plains of northwestern Texas, reptiles (74.8%) were by far the most frequent kestrel prey recorded on motion-activated video cameras, while invertebrates, mammals, and birds made up 18.2%, 4.4%, and 2.9%, respectively (Boal et al. 2021). Of 187 mammals documented, 121 (64.7%) recorded were >42 g and <75 g (Boal et al. 2021), which represented 38–68% of the mass of an...