Hope springs eternal

From Steve Watson:

We pretty much expected John's response to be something like that. The only thing that might make a difference is that the nestbox is not on institutional grounds as John thought, but rather is behind our house in open space. She's been hunting today several times, and has been successful. I think there's a lot of food out there, but of course, we're not really expecting that this will work out. Still, hope springs eternal...

The one thing we don't know is the temperature issue for the eggs. Assuming she could find sufficient prey, how constant and at what temperature would these eggs need to stay to be viable? We are in sunny Southern California, after all :)

Anyway, my thanks to John for his detailed response. We've watched enough predation in the wild to fully understand how tough life for wild creatures can be.

Steve

I had also sent Steve the almost certain news of our hatched chick. At the end of his philosophical letter he added:

Congratulations on the chick! That's such good news after a wild year (nest taken down, etc.).We'll be watching Pale Male and Lola from here, as well as wishing the best for our now solitary kestrel.