I cleaned out 3 of our 4 Wood Duck boxes on Sunday. 1) 19 eggs, at least 2 of them were Hooded Mergansers. The nest had significant down feathers indicating that a hen had been incubating the eggs. Several of the eggs were broken and the box smelled of rotten eggs. I have no idea if the broken eggs were the result of an incident that led the hen to abandon the nest or if the eggs were broken after she left. 2) 19 eggs, all Wood Duck. No down feathers indicating a hen had spent time with the eggs. 3) 14 eggs. Same situation as the above box. 4) I did not disturb this box as I thought I heard some movement in the box.
This has been a dismal year for waterfowl on our lake. I have only seen two or three broods of Canada Goose and then with only a few goslings. One pair had two goslings and the other had 5 goslings. Both pairs appeared to loose one youngster. We have never had so few broods and all with the lowest numbers that we have ever seen. For the first year that we have ever seen, we had no Mallard broods. We only had two Wood Duck broods (20 and 10 ducklings). Those were good size broods, but many fewer broods that in previous years. interestingly, we have not seen any of the broods for a couple of weeks. Steve Weston On Quigley Lake in Eagan, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
