Wood Duck Nesting Boxes
Wood Duck videos off YouTube are available further down this page.
4/28/2020
The hatch has started on Box 393 with hen 1045-30156. The "jump" should be tomorrow morning. I have added an outside camera with a different perspective which we hope will catch the ducklings leaving the hole and follow them to the ground. Currently we are broadcasting 2 additional boxes on this same feed, but I will change to show just box 393 later today.
Thanks for watching
Dale Schielke
RRGC Wood Duck Project Coordinator
Dale Schielke reported that the geo-locator bands are now on hand. Dale is now testing via a trial run connecting to You Tube for broadcasting. The advantage may be that the broadcast can incorporate sound. Wood duck box clean-out has started and will continue until done. All of the work normally done in February was postponed due to the snow accumulation. Dale reports that the effort is now over 75%. He expects to start banding hens with the geolocators in April 2019.
John Pfeiffer Cleaning Wood Duck Nest
Mike Estes with Screech Owl
Dale Schielke With Two Screech Owls
June 2018- Dale Schielke has provided numerous photos, videos and live video feeds for several wood duck boxes. Dale has moved video cameras from different boxes as the ducklings have made the jump in order to keep the feed current. Per the information provided by Dale, the Wood Duck hatch started approximately the 28th of April. Since then, there has been a succession of recorded hatches that have been shared with the world through the live feed via ustream.tv/channel/rrgc-duckam.
Within 24 hours of an entire clutch of eggs being hatched, the ducklings will make the jump. Dale placed cameras at several locations to record both the hatch and the jump. An amazing sequence and an outstanding effort by Dale the the other volunteers that assisted in addition to the schools and home schoolers that got involved.
In addition to wood ducks, there are screech owls, kestrals and now merganzers using the boxes.