Nest-box program helps Hungary's red-footed falcon population double in a decade

Ornithologist Péter Palatitz has spent 20 years studying the red-footed falcon, a colonial raptor that depends on abandoned rook nests to breed. After rook persecution in the 1980s and '90s destroyed those nesting sites and cut falcon numbers to a quarter of their former size, Palatitz began installing thousands of artificial nest boxes across Hungary in 2006, and the falcon population doubled within ten years. Satellite tracking of 28 birds also revealed they fly nonstop across the Mediterranean and Sahara for five days, covering 6,000 miles to winter in southern Africa.