Installing a wood duck house

We were given a nice wood duck house by Madison Audubon (via Mark Martin) and installed it yesterday. As the photo shows, it is sitting at the edge of our wetland. Actually, the water is not usually as high as the photo shows, but the night before we had a 3 inch rainfall. Normally, there is a small, clear-flowing, creek here, part of our spring-fed wetland.

Wood ducks like some open water but nest in cavities of trees, or artificial cavities such as our wood duck house. The house follows the design approved by the Wood Duck Society. Although a wood duck house can be placed on a tree, the best place is on a pole near water. Thus, our duck house has an ideal location. It's on a 10 foot pole with about 4 feet in the ground. We used a step ladder to get high enough to use the post-hole digger properly. The plastic sleeve at the bottom of the pole is an animal guard, since critters such as raccoons love to rob the nests. Clean wood shavings were put inside the box.

Wood ducks have been identified in our breeding bird surveys, although nests have not been found. Hopefully, we aren't too late to attract a nesting pair.

Marci and Jim Hess helped us install the pole and box.

This box is easy to see from Pleasant Valley Road. If you are driving east, you can pull over on the side of the road and scan the box for activity. We'd appreciate learning of any sitings (use the Contact form to the left).