Most of the time I place the hen back in the box. Occasionally they get away from me or leave the box. The maternal instinct always brings them back. I have never seen any hens that I have banded where the hen has abandoned the nest.
Time of year to start thinking woodies again.
We are putting up a couple more woody boxes on the ponds and cleaning out the old ones in the next month or so. Picked up eight of the fiberglass capsule style last week at the local Refuge to ad to my buddies property along the river.
Most of the time I place the hen back in the box. Occasionally they get away from me or leave the box. The maternal instinct always brings them back. I have never seen any hens that I have banded where the hen has abandoned the nest.
We used to do the duck banding at our local refuge, it was sure a fun project to do with the boys in summer when they were young. We used a few floating style that we made where ducks would follow a corn trail into a funnel that led to a wood tray filled with shelled corn. Some days we would have 30-40 in a trap. We would wind up the banding in late July when we started getting all recaptures. Set traps in early morning then checked them in early afternoon and evening. As a by catch we caught a few mallards a year too, a few muskrats and carp...once a medium sized beaver, hated it when a raccoon would get in the trap and would kill the ducks just eating heads off...coons were not released unharmed.
A little over ten years ago a friend of mine that works with the MI DNR brought me down some used cedar woody boxes that they had replaced. I gave a couple to a friend who wanted them for taxidermy mounts, a few to another friend with river bottom ground, used a few in back yard for squirrel boxes and threw one in my decoy shed.
The other day I dug the one out of the shed to put up on the front pond, it had a nail pull system to open it so I pried off top to ad hinges so it would match my others and accidently split the lid. Menards didn't have any wide cedar boards so I replaced it with pine. I put it up this past Friday about sixty yards from last years woody box hopefully it will get some action this spring.
I am really looking forward to the ducks nesting again this year.
Got all my boxes cleaned out and new shavings added last weekend. Also put on the waders and went out and replaced the loafing log I had fixed up for them with a longer one. This past week there's been 2 pairs of woodies hanging out on the pond.
You can do either. If you make your own make sure you don't mix in any sawdust or shavings from any treated lumber. I use Pine shavings from my planer of planer shavings from a local shop. I have also used shavings I bought from TSC. Some guys use Pine shavings and some guys use Cedar shavings. I would get whatever is available locally to you. Some of the other guys might be a little more helpful on this subject. I know theres a few guys here that have been involved with some big Wetland and Wood Duck house projects. Another thing I do is make sure to take out any large pieces and splinters, might not really matter but that's just what I do.
I've just always used cedar shavings, I don't know if it makes that big of difference. Its just convenient for me to pic up a small bale at Wal-Mart in the pet section and it's inexpensive, I use it in the dog house and kennel anyway. I do same as woodduck picking out the big splinter pieces and chunks of wood. The state here just uses pine shavings and it works good for them.
I put a good 6"-8" of shavings in the box because they end up compressing quite a bit, also clean out old egg shells and freshen shavings after the first setting to encourage a second besides the late winter complete cleanout.
I build mine. I made mine out of White Pine but a lot of plans call for Cedar or i've even seen Cyprus, those materials would probably hold up to the elements better than pine would. I used the plans That are on the wood duck society's website. Lots of good info on there. Don't forget to make or buy some sort of predator guard if you put up a wood duck house. www.woodducksociety.com
Yesterday afternoon I helped my buddy clean out his boxes along the river and we put up four new ones. A few of the boxes had hatched egg shells in them, some had small nests from a medium sized bird with the nests looking like complicated dove nests made of twigs? One box had five hooded merganser eggs from last year in it...something must have happened to hen or scared her off.
One old cedar box he has opens from the bottom, as soon as it cracked open what looked like skinny rats started falling out.....and high pitch squealing. It was baby fox squirrels so we buttoned the box back up and put the little squirrels back in it...so now he has ten woody boxes and one designated squirrel box.
Ive had a pair of Geese, pair of Mallards and up to 4 pairs of Woodies frequenting my ponds in the evenings over the past few weeks. I was outside listening for Gobblers this morning at daylight and seen a pair of Woodies sail into "the duck pond". I'm able to see part of the pond from my living room window so I watched and waited for them to leave and went down to check the boxes. No pics to share but I discovered 4 eggs in one of my nest boxes.
The back pond box had feathers and chips mounded up in center so one has started laying in it. Sorry for the blurry pic, the vid looked better.
The front pond box had a hen hooded merganser sitting in it, that is a first for me.
Hen hoody going in box.
The new/recycled nest box I put up this winter stumped me. I stuck the phone in and all I could see was weeds? So I ran home and got the step ladder and opened the top so I could see what was going on. All the cedar chips 8"-10" deep that I had in it were gone and had been replaced by ten inches of orchard grass? There are two deep depressions in it a little bigger than baseballs. I checked edge of pond and there were no wood chips anywhere, I buttoned it back up as is. I have no idea what kind of hard working bird did this, called a friend of mine with the Ohio ODNR that tends around 100 nest boxes on our local lake, showed him pics and he had never seen anything like it. I am interested to see exactly what kind of bird did this.
Anyone have any ideas on this one? This box is around ten yards off shore in three feet of water.
My buddy that I help with woody boxes has a couple with egg mounds in them today and this hen hoodie so far.
The pic really shows how much more cramped the capsules are vs. the wood boxes.
The hoody is still sitting on the front pond, a nervous hen woody is setting in the box on the back pond. When I got close to it she flew out.
I don't understand the broken eggs in the box? Inexperienced young hen or a hen fight?
The new box still has me baffled. I took the step ladder out with me and a bucket of cedar chips completely expecting that it was some swallow or pasture sparrow I needed to evict. I popped the top and instead of little eggs or small bird I find one ping pong ball sized egg sitting in it in a softball sized depression! I don't know what it is now...it took out all the cedar chips replaced them with orchard grass and lays an egg a little smaller than a wood ducks?
Now I have to let this progress all the way through, I'm thinking some kind of little owl or small hawk at this time...I'll know when its setting or when I see the chick/chicks I guess.
