Birds in Boxes

Because we live on water, I asked my dad to make up some wood duck boxes.  This was 8 or so years ago, before old age prevented him from working with wood, one of the things he loved most.   So our wood duck boxes have special meaning.  You can easily find patterns for them on the Internet if you want to build some, and most bird stores sell them already constructed.   If you put them up near water on a sturdy post, you may get wood ducks, or sometimes, common mergansers to nest near you.

The first year our boxes were up, I hadn't seen any duck  activity near them, even though there were wood ducks and mergansers on the water near us.  I convinced my husband that we should check the box mounted on the huge alder in our yard.  It's half screened with leafy branches, about 15 feet up the massive trunk.  My husband is no fan of ladders, so I always agree to stand on the lowest rung in order to steady it when he climbs.  On this sunny morning, as he climbed slowly upward, we listened carefully for any scratching or shuffling inside the box.  Silence.  Another step up. More silence.  The front panel of a well-constructed box will pivot up and out when the lower locking nail is removed.  This opens the full front of the box, leaving the front panel attached by the upper nail.  This allows for a thorough cleaning at the end of the season.
 My husband was wiggling loose the lower nail in order to open the box when whoosh! what seemed like a HUGE bird exploded, squawking (and pooping) out the small entry door of the box.  There was lots of arm swinging and swaying on the ladder by both of us, but I was elated.  We had a family in the box!  And it was a  common merganser hen, less common than a wood duck.
My husband was, understandably, not so elated.  We managed to reset the nail, get down the ladder and pull it away from the tree  so that no enterprising raccoons would have easy access to the box.  There were no convenient limbs nearby, but they can be pretty clever when it comes to harvesting eggs.
Because of the skilled secrecy of mother merganser, we didn't witness the fledging of the youngsters.  A week or so after what would have been their fledge date, we did see a beautiful merganser hen with a clutch of tiny, fluffy brown youngsters in the water.  Especially charming is the fact that the babies will ride on the parents' backs, sometimes half-tucked under a wing, in the water. 

The other box, nearer to the road, hosted a wood duck hen two years ago.   I didn't know she was in the box either, until one day, when I was out working in the side yard, I noticed a very high-pitched calling coming from the water right near the shore.  It's built up with sedges and reeds there, so I couldn't see who was calling so urgently.  But just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny duckling sail out of the entry hole of the box and flutter, kind of like a brown and yellow hankie, to the ground.   He was momentarily disoriented after his four-point landing, but he soon picked up on the calling again and headed, without hesitation, to the water where the mother wood duck waited.  This repeated four more times, with four tiny ducklings launching themselves fearlessly into the world to follow their mother.  I've learned that this fledging occurs on the day when the last chick has hatched.  Intrepid little guys.   As they were all getting reconnoitered in the water, an interested crow began to circle closer.  I couldn't stand it.   Interfering or not in what occurs in the natural world can be debated for hours, days, but I couldn't let one of those fuzzy guys who hadn't really had a chance at life lose it so quickly.  So I lobbed small rocks at the crow.  He finally went away, disgruntled.  There were a total of six ducklings by then, and no more came from the box.   Mother duck stopped calling and I assumed that she knew how many there were. (A  check of the box later in the day showed her to be correct.) We watched that brood grow under the  beautiful Cleopatra eye of their mother. 



Nesting birds should be disturbed as little as possible, but you can safely check nest boxes and not permanently scare away the parents.  I've checked bluebird boxes, swallow boxes and wood duck/merganser boxes.  You can even gently remove the nestlings in order to weigh and band them and return them to the box.  The parents will fuss and fly around, but if you're quick, gentle and respectful, no harm is done, and you can learn a lot.  There are blue bird trails all over America where caring folks are trying to bring back bluebirds to areas where all the trees have been removed.  They're cavity nesters and quickly take to boxes.  Gathering info from the bluebird boxes tells us how many young are successfully raised, are they healthy, who is using the box?  If you have a dead tree on your property, it's great if you can leave it.   Drill a few big holes in it~ who knows who you might get: woodpeckers and owls are also cavity nesters, and we are using up all the wooded land for our homes.  It's a good feeling to share and provide a bird family with a  home too.