Stressless Wood Duck House plans, built installed with predator guard (buy) info

[Stressless]

Woodies have followed the thaw back and are covering up SkiJump plot. One box on Fishbowl pond in the cypress has been used and appears successful hatches 4 out of the last 4 years. A couple pair of woodies getting ready to bid on it for the honeymoon.

 

[Stressless]

All three houses w cams show active nests.

 

[GoetsTalon]

That's awesome!

 

[Stressless]

 

[Left field]

Want to put some out at salt fork waiting on all the paperwork hoping for next year

 

[Stressless]

Great day to get this kinda work done, black ice is safely frozen to 5-6". Got 14 of 16 duck houses done today. All 14 had an active duck nest, 8 had another bird nest built on the hatched and unhatched duck nest that was under it. 10 had 1 or more unhatched duck egg. 13 of 14 had duck eggshells that looked like hatches. Average successful wood duck brood at the start 7. ~91 new woods ducks and two more boxes to check.

 

[Stressless]

Took a moment in March chores and got my last two wood duck houses out and up yesterday. This new one is in a old beaver pond that filled in and a creek channel runs thru it. About 70 yards upstream from the current beaver pond.

Beautiful bottom location, thats a total of 18 woody houses up and ready for '23 season. Done with new houses, yearly maintenance, late fall or winter, is once a year removing old eggs, nest litter and putting in new. Takes about 4-5cf of cedar bedding for 18 houses.

 

[Left field]

Took a moment in March chores and got my last two wood duck houses out and up yesterday. This new one is in a old beaver pond that filled in and a creek channel runs thru it. About 70 yards upstream from the current beaver pond.
View attachment 174866

Beautiful bottom location, thats a total of 18 woody houses up and ready for '23 season. Done with new houses, yearly maintenance, late fall or winter, is once a year removing old eggs, nest litter and putting in new. Takes about 4-5cf of cedar bedding for 18 houses.

How close are the boxes to each other? , have seen if too many too close they just lay and don’t nest

 

[Stressless]

How close are the boxes to each other? , have seen if too many too close they just lay and don’t nest

Interesting, I thought of that after reading some observations awhile ago. What they found in 'dump' nests were where the boxs, specifically openings, were in sight of each other, they experienced a higher rate of dump nests. I made sure that my boxes openings are not in sight of each other and 80% or more can't be seen be another box. I keep track of unopened eggs in each box by year and so far there's no correlation to witch ones have the majority of unhatched eggs to other boxes...

 

[Stressless]

It's that time of year for Duck Box maintenance, got all of them done except the one that was on a tree and it's submerged in the beaver pond.

Found a camera I setup and forgot about for 2 years! LoL the browning batteries were dead but the camera works great with new batts and the card had a couple good captures.

Had 5 of 18 duck boxes unused and that was a bit of a shock but I've noticed the numbers of Unhatched eggs and unused boxes were from a the last batch I made I used tools on hand to open them up a bit and will take note of the usage next year.

 

[GoetsTalon]

Seen a pair of woodies last week up this way so they are moving.

 

[Stressless]

 

[Stressless]

Well... Remembered a box I thought I had camera on, sure enough I missed it last week when I was resetting cams for deer season. Pleased to get some little hatchlings taking the BIG LEAP had a number of cams on boxes for a couple years and finally got a capture. Culmination of lots of work lol, feels good.

 

[triple_duece]

Outstanding! Love it

 

[Stressless]

@triple_duece It's a hard knock life for the ducks but so rewarding when it works.

 

[GoetsTalon]

That's pretty cool!