By Bruce Ross, Executive Director bross@wisducks.org
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s March, 2022 Newsletter edition.
A family volunteers for WWA by checking wood duck boxes.
With the calendar’s imminent transition to March’s lion, we need to be thinking about the breeding needs of cavity nesters like Wood Ducks, Hooded Mergansers and other birds – especially if we are responsible for having established some box nests in the past, or want to this spring. Bruce Urben wrote an article several years ago that speaks to this annual rite of spring and has a neat video of “jump day”.
But this article simply celebrates this tradition, and thanks to a partnership with the Wisconsin Outdoor News, creates an easy way to get kids involved. Normally we sell wood duck box kits to the public, but this year we are currently out of stock on kits, but do have a few houses left for sale. All of our remaining kit inventory is being used by chapter volunteers to build and position boxes around their communities. (By the way, if you know of a potential sponsor for WWA’s Wood Duck Box, check out this flyer.)
So what’s a wannabe wood duck boxer to do if they can’t get a kit from WWA? Thanks to a long-standing partnership with the Wisconsin Outdoor News, we can offer the plans and instructions to you free of charge. Check them out here! Kids under 18 who build the house are eligible for getting their picture in the WON and some neat stuff too. Just do it!