Wood Ducks at Lynden

March 19, 2015

This post is the first in a series by Junior Grounds Manager Weston Wagner tracking the behavior of wood ducks at Lynden.

Wood duck hen on nest
A wood duck hen on a nest at Lynden in 2014

March 19, 2015 - I witnessed the first pair of wood ducks of the year today. They were scoping out one of the newly installed boxes that we placed over the water. Wood ducks usually show up around the 1st of April or when the ice starts disappearing from the lake. There was just enough shore ice melted for the wood ducks to start to come and check things out for possible nesting sites. We put up the 3 wood duck boxes over the water on March 13, including an additional box at a new location. The new box is located over the water not too far from where other successful nest box sites are established. Wood ducks are not very territorial and do not fight over nesting locations.

I recently attended a nest box building workshop at the UWM field station. There were a handful of very knowledgeable people hosting the event. They mentioned that wood ducks are so non-territorial that you could have two wood duck boxes mounted back to back on the same 4 x 4 post and wood ducks would possibly use both boxes as nesting sites in harmony without conflict.

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Weston building a wood duck box

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Lynden's wood duck boxes, built by Weston & Bob Retko

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Installing a wood duck box

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Possible nesting site for wood ducks


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