Hello Tweets,
Awhile back, I wrote to this forum seeking suggestions on how to keep
starlings from nesting in the wood duck house that is just off my property
and visible from my kitchen. Thank you to all who provided very nice tips.
Since its not MY wood duck house, and accessing it requires a very delicate
balancing act on a ladder set on mud, teetering on the verge of tumbling
into the pond, my options were limited.
As a reminder, a neighbor put up a wood duck house by a little pond near my
house several years ago. Over the years, I have only seen starlings nesting
in it, although wood ducks are in the area and they do successfully breed
every year. This year, I saw a starling chase a wood duck away from the
house and decided to try to take some action.
Of the many suggestions I received, the easiest for me to do was to put up a
shiny/reflective surface inside of the house, opposite of the entry hole.
Apparently, that scares the starlings (does it scare the wood ducks too?).
Being low tech, I took some shiny aluminum foil, wrapped it around a piece
of cardboard, and attached it to the inside back wall of the house.All
without managing to fall backwards into the pond and muck.
Weeks went by, and nothing happened. I did see a starling start to enter the
house but then quickly exited, so perhaps it worked!? However, over a couple
of weeks, I saw no wood duck activity at all (and was quite distressed about
this).
However, about three days ago, lo and behold, we had 4 male wood ducks and
one female wood duck in our yard, eating cracked corn that we put out! Since
then, I can't look out my kitchen window without seeing 2 or more wood
ducks! They are obviously nesting nearby. They are not in the wood duck
house, however, and I did see a starling go into it today...so that battle
was lost. The strong presence of the beautiful wood ducks (and the lovely
little Hooded Mergansers who always breed in our little pond), does make me
very happy.
So...the wood duck house is a failure, but the wood ducks are just fine
without it. It should just be removed, but its not mine and the man who put
it up is not someone I feel comfortable asking him to take it down.

Other yard birds: lots and lots of very yellow gold finches, in addition to
all the usual suspects. And, after several years of silence, I finally heard
a Western screech owl in my morning walk a few days ago (I miss them
terribly, as I used to hear them all of the time...but development and their
general decline has silenced them)

Good birding,
Valerie Anderson
Olympia
valhikes at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20100404/f718eb5b/attachment.htm