Waiting for eggs
A quick update because it’s been a busy week for me (not as much for the ducks).
Good news 1: A wood duck is laying in the East nest and there are 3 eggs so far! Good news 2: The hooded mergansers have been in the creek. We hope they’ll nest here again this year.
The West and South nests have had ducks visiting but no eggs yet. We hope the activity will pick up soon. I will stream the cameras when it becomes likely that you will to see something other than wood chips: duck visits are very brief at this time of year. (However, my brother suggested that maybe we’d all enjoy watching momma wood chips teaching their little ones how to flip in the wind and how to not let their little dust particles mess the nest; made me smile!)
Ducks are here! … sort of
It’s been a quiet, slow start here even though ebird.org has reported many wood ducks in the Twin Cities area. Yesterday was the first time we’ve seen them here but they showed up in a large group of 5 males and 4 females. One of the females dropped into a nest box for about 30 seconds, then left. Today two ducks looked but did go into the east and south nest boxes. Both visits lasted about 1 second: beak-in-the-box, peek-in-the-box, gone!
This is typical behavior at this time of the nesting season: nest box visits are very short and scattered. The cameras are set up so I can easily check them for activity (they record only when motion is detected), but I won’t start live streaming until there is something more interesting for you to see than wood shavings in a box. Here’s hoping for a good season!
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2025
(This is just a visual separator between the 2025 and 2024 postings.)
2024
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14 ducklings + 2
Ducklings in the East nest box jumped yesterday morning. Incubation was less than perfect as I’ve written in previous posts, with some eggs left in corners that were very cold whenever I checked. I expected there would be some late ducklings, and that did occur.
Wood duck ducklings need about 20 to 24 hours to develop enough strength to climb out, follow their mother, and swim. If a duckling hatches many hours after the others it is not developed enough to leave but the mother duck can’t wait. Her ducklings need to eat and her instinct is driven by the energy level of the group. When that is right she calls for them to leave.
In some cases a duckling is very late, just hatching when the family leaves and in a few cases a duckling will hatch after they’ve left. Here’s a video I made in 2021 called “Little Woodie’s First Day” about a very late duckling that hatched all alone during a warm night. That duckling lived; the video has a happy ending!
14 wood duck ducklings jumped from East nest box Sunday morning during a long 8 minutes (often it’s much quicker), leaving two that were noticeably smaller and weaker still trying to get out, but they couldn’t climb up to the door.
The door is about 10 inches up in the nest box. It could be 10 feet up for a wild nest in a hollow tree. A wood duck requires enough depth between the door and the ducklings so a predator (e.g. raccoon) can’t reach the ducklings. It will not use a nest that has a door that is too low.
The two in the nest box continued peeping which kept the mother (with her 14 little ones) nearby, still calling for them. They tried again and again but they just couldn’t do it: one hop up was all the older one could accomplish before its little legs gave out and it dropped back down. Even if it had gotten out it would not have been able to keep up. The littlest one stopped trying first, then after many minutes, the older one too. Momma duck and her family left.
Six eggs did not hatch: five wood duck eggs and one hooded merganser egg.
I taped a piece of window screen over the nest box door partly to keep the two little ducklings in and safe and partly to keep other curious ducks out. I gave the two some hours to rest and get stronger after working so hard.
Ducklings absorb egg yolk into their bodies – it’s high-powered nourishment that lasts for 2 or 3 days. They grow significantly in both size and strength in their first 20 hours.
Then, in the early afternoon …
… we opened the nest box door. The older one was “up”, the younger one hiding and resting.
We gently moved them into a comfy box …
… and took them to their new, temporary home: the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Roseville MN.
Their chance for survival is probably higher than their siblings. They’ll be fed and protected until they are ready to go back into the wild … to someday raise ducklings of their own.
What happened to the robins?
The robin’s nest was empty on Sunday morning May 26th. The recordings made by the nest camera revealed what had happened.
May 20th – A video camera is streaming and recording activity at a robin’s nest in the very small tree on the left.
May 20th – The robin’s nest has 3 eggs. This picture was taken by holding a phone camera above the nest. The video camera couldn’t be positioned that high because of tree branches.
May 25th – After about 12 days of incubation the eggs are hatching.
May 25th 3:45 PM – A parent discards an empty eggshell that had a little robin inside only minutes ago.
May 25th 6:30 PM – Two chicks have hatched. The wind vibrated the nest which made them think maybe a parent bird was there, so they’re asking for food.
May 25th 6:35 PM – A parent delivers a tiny grub for a tiny chick.
May 26th 4:40AM – Later that night – tiny robins are not the only thing that has hatched lately: LOTS of mosquitos too. The robin has its head tucked in and the bugs have a hard time getting through the feathers.
May 26th 4:50AM – Something shakes the little tree and wakes up the robin. The mosquitos seize the opportunity.
May 26th 4:50AM – A few seconds later the tree shakes again and the robin flies away into the dark night, chirping its loud alarm call. The camera isn’t fast enough to stop the motion: the blur is the robin’s wing feathers on a down-stroke. Its body is already out of the picture.
May 26th 4:51AM – A few seconds later a marauder appears. (Earlier I considered adding a raccoon barrier to the tree but didn’t. Now I wish I had – it might have stopped the cat.)
May 26th 4:51AM – The cat has a little robin. Feral cats and domestic cats that are allowed to roam outdoors are really hard on wildlife.
May 26th 4:57AM – The cat returns again. It took all three: two chicks and perhaps the third one too if it had hatched, or otherwise the egg. The cat climbed up and turned its back to the camera so it wasn’t clear, but in any case the nest was emptied. This pair of robins will try again somewhere else.
“An American Robin can produce three successful broods in one year. On average, though, only 40 percent of nests successfully produce young. Only 25 percent of those fledged young survive to November. From that point on, about half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next. Despite the fact that a lucky robin can live to be 14 years old, the entire population turns over on average every six years.”
Quote from Cornell Labs “All About Birds” https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Robin/