Wood Duck Nesting Box project 2018

Canso

Canso

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Lower Mainland/ Vancouver
My friend Chris and I have this years nest box project ready well ahead of nesting season this year. We had great weather and a great turnout of volunteers too.
Something new this year is we had a couple businesses offer to help us out! Reliable Gun in Vancouver and Kent Cartridge Canada donated items for our Volunteers and we added identifiers to our boxes to thank them. Reliable will be getting us white background ID for our boxes soon and I'll swap out the dark ones that the trail cam doesn't illuminate very well.
We also got a "Boat Tote" from the manufacturer! Nice addition to anyones hunting/fishing boat, I may put one in my blind too. And we are also getting items from Sure Shot, makers of my personal favourite double reed duck calls, the Yentzen Caller, Yentzen One and Yentzen One2. I use them all, I've had them since the mid-70's!!! Can't wait to see what is in our USA mailbox, should get down to it in a few days.









 
We also did the farm I hunt at. We brought new hunter Carson and his dad with us to introduce Carson to conservation work. The farm is private property so we install trail cameras there to capture the returning ducks coming into the area. We have 14 boxes at the farm, 80 at the public marsh! I still have 8 to put up next week!!!









 
Birds are starting to show up this past few days. I'll post updates for anyone that wants to follow along. Same format as last year, the majority of viewers messaged me that they prefer it that way!









 
Very cool, I will watch your posts with great interest. I spent some cold, snowy days this past winter in our nice, warm heated shop building various bird boxes. New for me was building Northern saw Whet Owl boxes which do triple duty because they will also accommodate the American Kestrel and the Flying Squirrel.

I am not sure about rules here for posting links but if I am breaking any my apologies, my intentions are good. :)

http://www.ab-conservation.com/downloads/educational_materials/brochures/nest_box_guide_and_instructions.pdf

The initial research that I did on the Wood Duck indicates that they are infrequent visitors here, but there are a number of other cavity nesting ducks that frequent our region. I live very close to a lake so I think that I will explore putting up some "duck boxes" around our lake.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Dave.
 
Excellent turnout, your programme is really gaining momentum. Just starting to build some boxes. We sheeted a building with 1/2 inch plywood last year so lots of pieces laying around. Unfortunately we are still plowing snow up here, got a 6 inch dump yesterday so a little behind on spring chores. People are still shovelling roofs and a few tachoed buildings here. Put some swallow boxes up last year, going to relocate three of them as I created a few territorial disputes which ended up having one box leave well into nesting time. One success to report and hopefully the demise of many mosquitos. Keep up the effort.
 
I did the nesting box thing years ago. I was able to get all the materials donated by a couple local builders supply stores and one of my hunting partners, though we lived 4 1/2hrs drive apart was a machine shop teacher at a high school and he got his school’s woodworking class involved and they bulit all the boxes. The two of us put out the boxes, took pictures and gave pics to all the donors. I maintained the boxes for a number of years but eventually just didnt have time and a few years later they were in sad repair. Many were missing too as the ponds aged and timber fell or was pilfered by firewood seekers. It was a fun project though and was nice to see when birds used the boxes.
 
How many seasons do the boxes typically last? Would painting them help? If you can identify a paint shop run by hunters they might give you suitable mis-tints for free.
 
Our first boxes were crappy plywood we scrounged at my buddies work site. Our local high school cut them up and made the earliest boxes we have. You can see they are rough but the birds use them! We’ve thrown out maybe 4 so far and have 100 made (8 still getting ready to put up). Last year we put up new ones and had 2 to take out. We decided to just put construction screws into it to tighten it and we put them back up. Both were nested in and are still out there.
Next year will see some come out but we received some support from our environment ministry and they are having enough pine boards delivered to the school for 40-50 boxes. They will replace some of our 2013-2014 boxes.
I’ve read that paint and stain can be a problem for the birds so we just don’t bother doing it. The couple we do have stained were for a co-worker but he didn’t fill up and put them out so I decided to add them to the farm this year.
We hear the pine should be good for 5-7 years.


TheTooner said:
How many seasons do the boxes typically last? Would painting them help? If you can identify a paint shop run by hunters they might give you suitable mis-tints for free.
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