Well, despite our attempts to remove the Starlings, they've nested and laid 5 eggs, so we decided to let it go this year and let them incubate and hatch them. I know, I know...I'm catching grief from all sorts of people who think we should spend all of our spare time cleaning out starling nests (and just as much email/comments from people who like starlings and want to see them hatch). I'm trying to be nice and diplomatic and respond to them, but the bottom line is...it's my nestbox, and quite frankly, even though I'd rather not have starlings there, we just didn't design it to be cleaned out every other day (mostly because we didn't HAVE this problem last year). So unless the anti-starling crowd is willing to come over to my house every day, climb up the hill, take the box down (don't forget to bring a friend...it takes two people...the box/pole is *heavy* and awkward), clean it out, set it back up, all while not messing up the cameras/cables/etc., this nest will stay. No, it's not the best answer, but all in all, 5 more starlings isn't going to make or break the situation. They've been here since the 1890's, my guess is they're here to stay. And we're not in a particularly fragile ecosystem where I live (and if we were, the bulldozers and graders and new home construction is doing far more damage AND creating starling-friendly environments than anything I could do).
We'll do a better job next year, either with a better system for raising/lowering the kestrel nestbox (donations of purple martin house pole with winch gratefully accepted), and/or a red-tail hawk platform.
Also, we'll be installing a bathouse with camera soon...watch for those images to appear on the website!