Installation of Wood Duck Nesting Boxes...

One project that has been planned for some time came to fruition on January 15th. Under the hard work and guidance of Edsel Taylor, Kristina Wheeler, Colin Hocking, Caroline Heape, and Andrea Grabman combined efforts with some of the Caw Caw maintenance staff to place 5 Wood Duck nesting boxes in locations spread around the swamp.

As you may know, Edsel has been monitoring and maintaining nesting boxes on his own property for several decades, and based upon his records, is responsible for being the 'grandfather' of thousands of wood duck ducklings!!

Having scouted the area a few weeks before, Kristina and Edsel had identified several locations to place the boxes, and with Edsel's expertise, it is hoped that the boxes will be busy in the coming months!

On the day, it took a lot of hard labor, carrying, digging, positioning, and planting the boxes, and then adding cedar wood shavings as a bed inside the box, but our enthusiastic work crew got the job done by the end of the day!

Once the nesting begins, it is our intention that with Edsel's help, we will have a group of Master Naturalist volunteers that will be responsible for inspecting and recording the nesting activity. Fairly soon we'll be hearing from Edsel and others about the Wood Ducks during a T&D and W&T, and we'll be asking for those that are interested to attend a training so that we will have a well-informed group of volunteers.

In the coming years we are looking forward to not only adding to the number of boxes at Caw Caw, but starting similar programs at other CCPRC parks.