May 2012 Adventures: 1 of 3

Adventure 1 of 3: Wood Duck Housing

As a Father's Day gift, we put a wood duck house up on one of the ponds in my parents backyard. Unsure of the likelihood that it would be used in it's inaugural summer, we waited to check on its occupancy status until a month later.

May 5th Jake and I walked down to the house, talking loudly on our approach and then gently tapping the house and makeshift metal squirrel deterrent on the post. When there was no response from the house, we figured it was unoccupied and pointed a small camera in the hole to see if it'd had any visitors.

We visited again on May 13th. This time "scaring" the mother enough from a distance to give her plenty of time to poke her head out of the house and fly away.  Counted at least 9 eggs!

We approached again on May 22nd, and discovered that the mom was out. It's likely that she had left for her breakfast run. We were having such a warm spring/summer, I'm guessing her down cover was plenty of insulation to keep the little eggs comfy.

 May 30th-- the last visit that had eggs still.  We figured the eggs would be hatching in the next few weeks and wanted to be sure that mom felt safe enough to lead the ducklings out-- so we stopped approaching the house. (We did check again at the end of June and found just 1 unhatched egg with bits of shell around the down.  It looks like a successful stay!  We'll empty out the down and clean the house later this fall.)