NAFA Small Grants Program Awardees
(with supplemental matched funding from the Falconry Fund Presidents Grant)
New Mexico Cooper’s Hawk Study – Brian Millsap, NAFA member
Total Award $4000.00 (NAFA $2000.00 plus supplemental award of $2000.00 from the Falconry Fund Presidents Grant)
This project aims to obtain a model data set from a representative raptor to improve demographic models used by the USFWS to determine allowable harvest rates. The study targets a large, easily accessible breeding population of Cooper’s hawks (Astur cooperii) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Through nest monitoring, banding, and tagging with GPS transmitters, information on survival probabilities, productivity, and other cryptic life history attributes – age at first breeding, sexual differences in demography, migration behavior, breeding propensity, and the impacts of aging – are collected each year, making this one of the most intensively studied raptor populations in North America.
A shortcoming of the study is that much of the demographic information comes from tagged hawks, but suitable GPS transmitters for males have only recently become available. One objective is to better understand the effect of sexual differences in demographic rates on population growth, and that requires reliable data for both sexes; thus deploying tags on male Cooper’s hawks is critical. This proposal requested funding to purchase three 6-gram GPS transmitters for deployment on male Cooper’s hawks.
Digital Desert Hawking II – Matt Mullenix, NAFA Member
Total Award $3820.00 (NAFA $1910.00 plus supplemental award of $1910.00 from the Falconry Fund Presidents Grant)
American falconer Harry McElroy (1930-2024) inspired and influenced thousands of fellow practitioners with accounts of his unique and highly successful falconry for more than 70 years across the Southwestern United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru.
McElroy’s series of popular books on desert hawking comprise a priceless collection of falconry heritage and memorabilia being collected and preserved by The Archives of Falconry (TAF). As part of a public celebration of Harry’s life held at the 2025 TAF Spring Rendezvous, co-host Matt Mullenix outlined means to support the growth of TAF’s Harry McElroy Collection and promote the widest possible distribution of the man’s works and wisdom to the betterment of falconry worldwide.
This project aims to kick-start that effort by producing electronic editions of Desert Hawking II, including full audio, text only, and Spanish-language versions.
American Kestrel Project; Shenandoah Valley, Virginia – Jill Morrow
Total Award $1600.00 (NAFA $800.00 plus supplemental award of $800.00 from the Falconry Fund Presidents Grant)
The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (SVRSA) kestrel project began with 4 nest boxes in 2008 and has expanded to about 80 nest boxes. Technicians have placed bird bands on 718 adult kestrels and 3,394 nestlings from 2008-2025.
Augmentation and documentation of reproductive success is important given the decline in kestrel abundance. One objective of the work was to establish a kestrel nest box program to document whether kestrels in the SVRSA respond to availability of nest boxes as they have done elsewhere (i.e., an initial increase followed by a substantial decrease in occupancy after an average of 5 years).
After 17 years of operation, we have not documented a decline in occupancy, or any other reproductive parameter. This grant will specifically examine the fates of winter trapped kestrels to determine whether breeding birds were recaptured in SVRSA, not recaptured, or recaptured in another region, in an effort to evaluate the the importance of migratory status to population stability.