Subject: [Tweeters] Documenting Wood Duck Nesting Behavior
Date: May 8 20:36:22 2009
From: Lee Rentz - lee at leerentz.com


This year we are monitoring and documenting Wood Duck nest behavior
using an infrared and visible light video camera mounted on the
ceiling of a wood duck box. At our house located on Fawn Lake on the
Olympic Peninsula, we set up three nest boxes, two of which are
currently occupied by Wood Ducks and one by a Hooded Merganser. Plus
there are various extra Woodies and Hoodies who wish they were
occupying the boxes.

We have posted the first three short videos to YouTube at: http://
www.youtube.com/user/duckwatch

For two of them we wrote a commentary in the "more info" section, and
for the third, Karen did a spoken audio track (which we'll do from
now on). Since cavity nesters usually live private lives, it is
interesting to see their ordinary day-to-day behavior, as well as
occasional conflicts with other individuals of the same or different
species.

There will be lots more short videos to come, but at least we got a
start on the project.

As of right now, the Wood Duck is incubating the eggs nearly round-
the-clock, with just two short breaks daily. There are probably
nearly 20 eggs, at least one of which is a Hooded Merganser egg and
several are from one or more other Wood Ducks.

Check out the videos for a fresh look at a beautiful species.

Lee & Karen Rentz
Shelton WA
lee at leerentz.com