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Posts Tagged ‘wood duck nesting box’

SOLC26: Day 14: There is Motion at Your Wood Duck House

Posted in Books, nature, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , , on March 14, 2026| 8 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

For years now, we have watched nesting in the wood duck house my husband built for the bayou bank. This time of year beginning in late February a female hen comes to the box to lay a clutch of eggs.

We invested in a Ring doorbell camera, not to watch for criminal activity, but to see the comings and goings of a resident wood duck hen.

View from the camera when another hen came in to gossip.

These days my phone alerts me constantly. “There is motion at the wood duck house.”

The eggs are due at the end of the month. She usually sits for 28-31 days. We had a cool snap, so I’m worried that all the eggs won’t hatch. But that is the nature of nature, right?

Once the eggs hatch, all on the same day, the little ones will jump from the house 24 hours later. It is a wonder to watch. A few years ago we caught it on video.

Last year I released a small chapbook of poems about the wood duck nesting season, Wood Duck Diary. The funds from the sales benefit the Teche Project. This is a book of tanka poems in English and in French.

March 11

Feathering the Clutch

Hen stitches feathers
one by one. Woven blanket

clutch-cover of down.
Her beak a knitting needle.
Eggs safe and snug below.

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Slice of Life: New Tenants

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged , , , on May 30, 2023| 8 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Wikimedia Commons Black-bellied whistling duck

If you have read my blog through the years, you may already know that we raise wood ducks. Actually, we have a wood duck house that has a Ring doorbell camera inside. In February and March of this year we watched a mother wood duck dutifully attend to a dozen eggs and successfully hatch 8 of them. We missed actually witnessing Jump Day because it was a school day. I even missed watching the little ducklings climbing out on my phone video because I was out at recess.

In the past we have had two clutches, one in March and another in May or June. But this year the duck house remained empty for weeks after the first mother left with her eight little ducklings. We waited.

Once again we have a tenant duck, but not a wood duck. It’s a Mexican squealer or black-bellied whistling duck. At first we were disappointed, but as the weeks have gone back, this weird orange-billed duck has won over our hearts. We’ve had to learn about this breed.

The first thing we noticed in the description were the not-so-favorable adjectives, words like “boisterous” and “gaudy”.

Fun Facts about Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks

  • Known as tree ducks because they hang out in trees.
  • “Sexual dimorphism”: both male and female look alike.
  • They form lifelong pair bonds. Both male and female tend to the hatchlings.
  • There are plenty of them, low-conservation concern.

Egg incubation is 25-30 days. I marked that the first night of sitting was on May 5th, so we should see hatching in the next week or so. The babies are colored like bumblebees, yellow and black feathering. Whether wood ducks or whistlers, our nest box continues to entertain us.

Inside the nest box, the whistling duck is taller than a wood duck and can look out the window.

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Slice of Life Challenge Day 20: Wood Duck House

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged on March 20, 2023| 7 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

We live on the Bayou Teche (pronounced “tesh”) in New Iberia, Louisiana. Our address/mile marker is 69.4 on the 125 mile bayou. The name came from a Native American word for snake. The legend tells of a huge snake that was killed by arrow and its body made the impression of what is now a water way.

One of our favorite activities on the bayou is our wood duck nesting house. Each year for about 5 years, we have had two clutches of eggs hatch in the box. Jeff mounted a Ring doorbell camera inside the box, so we can watch the mother duck come and go and know when the babies hatch. The very next day, 24 hours, the little tiny hatchlings jump from the house and follow mother duck off into the bayou.

The mother duckling has been sitting for a month now. She’s an experienced mom that has been attentive and dedicated to her eggs. But today is due day, and the temperatures have dropped below freezing, a weird March winter chill. I am worried. I’m hoping they will stay in their safe eggshells for at least another day, so they can jump into milder water.

My head knows that wood ducks have been doing this for generations, so they will be OK. But my grandmother heart wants them all to hatch and all to go off into the sunset, so to speak. This is a screenshot from yesterday as the hen was busy turning the eggs. If you want to watch the Jump Day, we will set up a “Duck Door” camera and record the jump. Last year’s footage is on my YouTube channel linked below.

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Slice of Life: Jump Day

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged , , , , , on April 5, 2022| 6 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

Thirty-four days. Our wood duck hen sat for thirty-four days. We were losing hope, afraid the freeze back in March did it. On Sunday morning I got a text from a bayou neighbor, “Today is jump day for one of our houses!”

“Our duck has been sitting for 34 days. No hatching yet. I’m not sure we should keep waiting.”

“Mine sat for longer than usual.”

So I flipped over to our RIng app. Did I hear cheeping? Mother hen was eating a shell. They were hatching!

You probably want to know how many, but it’s nearly impossible to count when they are little blurry black blobs wiggling.

Monday was Jump Day. It was also a school/work day. We had to rely on the camera. Jeff set up a new Ring camera outside of the house in order to record the jump. Around 10:00, I checked the cameras. Gone. All the ducks had jumped. I missed it, but the camera did not.

As I showed the video to my student, Avalyn, she named the little ducklings. “Come on, Tiffany, you can do it!” she urged as one of the babies hesitated to jump. Avalyn also wrote a poem-song (impromptu) to celebrate Jump Day!

Wood duck, wood duck
open your shell.
Come out, come out, come out now!
Little duck, little duck,
quack with your snout.
Little duck little duck, little duck
don’t you frown
Come play in the bayou
and make no sound.

Avalyn, 2nd grade
Jump Day, 2022: Watch the lower right corner to see Momma Duck come back to get a wayward duckling.

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