nest box 2-2008

Giffs Farm - Nest Box Photo Blog

Nest Box 2 - 2008

03/30/2008, 7pm, outside temp 38 degrees - A quick check of the boxes tonight, looking in this box I noticed alot of the bedding appeared to be wet so I started pulling out the old stuff to replace it with new dry shavings. After pulling away the top inch or so, two eggs appeared. I went ahead and replaced the bedding and put the eggs back in about an inch under the new dry bedding. I suspect it is the Wood duck as this was her nest last year also.

04/02/2008, 7:30am, outside temp 29 degrees - first time I was able to view her in the box. She was in about 25 minutes covered the eggs and left. With the lack of down in the box she still has not laid all of her clutch.

04/08/2008, 7:15pm, outside temp 49 degrees - I did not see her in the box but I can now see she has some down mixed in with the wood shavings and 8 to 10 eggs. I keep the monitor on when I am home so I can look at it throughout the day. I still believe she has more to lay.

04/14/2008, 7:30am - I keep the feed stored in sealed totes in my garage, the monitor is also in the garage. As I was putting together the feed, I noticed her covering the eggs and I knew she was preparing to leave the nest. I was able to get these photos as she exited the nest box.

04/14 - 05/12/08 temperature varied from the upper 30's at night to the upper 70's in the day. She began setting around 4/12/08

5/13/08 - 3:05pm - This video (windows media video/1.8MB/1:03 min long) shows how cautious she is when leaving the nest box. She peers out the box numerous times before jumping to the opening and exiting the box. A few things to note, the ducklings at this point are still 17 plus hours till she calls them out and you can see how anxious they are already getting, another point is to notice how they all get very quiet when she leaves the nest. They did this every time and remained very still and quiet until she returns.

looking out box

05/13/08 - video clip

5/14/08 - the duck left the box for the final time at 6:47am and began calling them from outside the box. She could be heard from inside my garage where I have the monitor set up. The first duckling jumped up the ladder within minutes and the rest followed quickly. All 13 ducklings had exited the nest within about 3.5 minutes.

The video clip (3:33 min long/4.9MB/windows media video) below is taken from inside the box and shows the ducklings climbing/jumping up the ladder to exit the nest box. The photo is taken from the clip.
duckling leaving nest

05/14/08 - video clip

She laid a total of 15 eggs with 13 of them hatching. I suspect the two that I found in the soaked bedding back on March 30th may be the two that did not hatch.

eggs left in nest

Wood ducklings (eight days old) and mother

08 wood duck and ducklings