More nest boxes...

If you've been to Caw Caw recently, you might have noticed more shiny new nest boxes along the swamp trails.

In all, 10 new Wood Duck nesting boxes have been installed over the last year; 5 last year and 5 more in the most recent installation.

In the photograph above, you can see all the volunteers and Caw Caw staff that were involved to make this session an enormous success on what turned out to be a lovely December morning!

Before the installation though, with the help of Edsel Taylor, our Wood Duck nest box expert, Kristina Wheeler, and Caw Caw's manager, Dennis Burgart, new locations had to be scouted. Once that was done, we had to co-ordinate with the Caw Caw Natural History and Maintenance staff and CMNA volunteers to pick a date for the installation to happen.

We also had to obtain the boxes and posts! Fortunately, Edsel informed a small number of us that SCDNR was doing a lottery on nest boxes, so 4 of us applied to 'win' some, and Kristina was the 'lucky' winner of three SCDNR Boxes!!

By the way, a HUGE shout out to the Maintenance Staff who did a lot of the heavy lifting and heavy digging to make the process much easier on us volunteers! Although, the volunteers got stuck in, helping with puting all the pieces together and digging and lifting, too!

Moving forward, led by our CMNA Wood Duck nest box co-ordinator, Bobbi Studley, a group of volunteers will be responsible for the upkeep and monitoring of the boxes that are now in place. This will include not only maintaining the boxes, but also their cleaning and monitoring for nesting activity. Records of the number of eggs laid and successful hatchings will be kept.

Hopefully, the Wood Ducks will love the effort that has gone into providing them homes, and will reward Caw Caw with many ducklings come the spring!!