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Jump Day on July 3rd:

A family of seven ducklings left the East nest box at about 8:25am CDT on July 3rd. I hope many of you watched them. For those who didn’t – well, for everyone too – I made a video of the event. It’s kind of the same as past videos although it’s unique in including spooky nighttime clips of animals via a camera that was monitoring the creek. But also … is there such a thing as too many videos of cute ducklings? I think not.

I set up the creek-side camera hoping it would record the duck family there but it didn’t. My best guess is they got into the creek just east of the camera while it was looking to the west, and then they quickly went downstream out of sight. I also had a ground-level camera that did get a nice shot of momma duck but not the ducklings. They all ignored the large landing zone and chose to jump into the hostas off to the side (because that’s where mom was).

Summary this year:

There were three batches of ducklings this year and all of them were wood ducks; no hooded mergansers this time. Two nests left within minutes of each other on May 20th: 24 ducklings, 12 from each nest, 240 watchers; and then the 7 ducklings on July 3rd with 134 watchers. The count of watchers is provided by my video streaming service and represents unique device addresses – not people – that are streaming the live video. The 10 year totals are also interesting. Since I started to keep track in 2016, 425 wood duck and 25 hooded merganser ducklings have hatched and gone out into the world from here. There’s a year-by-year tally for each nest box on the home page at birdsgv.com.

Goodbye:

This is the end of the nesting season. Two of the three nest boxes are now stored in the garage (the South one stays up year-round) and all of the cameras are offline until next spring.

I hope you enjoyed watching!

Paul

Here is a link to the new video, in case the embedded version below doesn’t work for you.

Jump Day is early (probably) Friday Morning:

The East nest ducklings hatched at around 5:30am on Thursday. They will be active today on-and-off, practicing their climbing and jumping. Ducklings need 20 to 24 hours in the nest to be strong enough to leave. Because they hatched very early today they will accomplish that early tomorrow. Momma duck won’t leave until there’s good light – they are daytime birds and she needs to be able to see any predators that might harm the ducklings. But sunrise is at 5:30am CDT, so it’s possible that she’ll call her ducklings to leave very early.

To watch:

Go to birdsgv.com and choose the “View Live Cameras” link. For information about what to expect see this page.

4 cameras!

All of the other nests are done for the season so I have spare cameras and I’ve set up 4 of them … because, why not! They’re online now.

• Inside the nest box looking down – the camera that has been live all along in recent weeks.
• Outside view of the nest box and the ground below – watch both inside and outside at the same time.
• Ground level view of the ducklings landing area – another outside view with close-ups of the ducklings and momma duck.
• A camera downstream of the nest box in the creek – watch this one after they’ve left the sight of the others; the duck family might be visible if they come down the creek.

When I checked the East nest this morning 3 of the eggs were pipped (slightly broken by the duckling inside) but the other 4 were smooth. I just now (8:00pm) checked again when the duck was away from the nest and all 7 are pipped. The ducklings do this about 24 to 48 hours before they hatch so that measurement has just started today. My best guess (often wrong) is they will hatch overnight tomorrow (Wednesday) or instead perhaps on Thursday, spend Thursday night in the nest box, and leave on Friday.

I plan to have 3 live cameras on Jump Day: the one inside the nest box (the one that is live now), another viewing from the outside, and a third one in the creek. This last one may or may not show them. Sometimes the mother duck will rest with her ducklings in the brush just below the nest box for an hour or more, or she might lead them close to the bank under the overhanging foliage. But if we’re lucky she will take her ducklings past the creek camera.

Here is a page that describes the behavior of wood ducks leading up to and including Jump Day. I hope you can watch and enjoy the show!

I just activated the camera in the East nest box for online viewing. Use the “Live Cameras” button at birdsgv.com

The East nest ducklings are due to hatch sometime between June 29th and July 4th. Until then momma duck will be in the nest about 22 hours out of each day, resting, incubating, and occasionally turning her 7 eggs. They all are wood duck eggs and they all are hers. Sometimes other ducks lay eggs in a nest and that sometimes includes hooded mergansers, but this duck started late in the season when others weren’t around much, she visited for an hour or so every day until the 7th was laid, then started incubating.

This is the second round for the East nest box. 12 ducklings have already hatched here and they went out into the world on May 20th. In past years we’ve occasionally had nest boxes that get used twice: one family of ducks leaves after a month of incubation, then another duck moves in and lays, and her ducklings leave after another month of incubation. The most recent previous time that occurred was in 2022. The birdsgv.com home page has a section that provides duckling counts for each nest box, indicates how many were woodies or hoodies, and shows when a nest was used twice. I just added it up: the total number of ducklings hatched here since I started keeping track ten years ago is 443! That’s 392 wood ducks and 51 hooded mergansers. 7 more coming soon!

As usual I’ll post to this blog (which also sends email to subscribers) when there is more information about the East nest duck. I usually can predict hatching day 24 to 48 hours before it happens.

The East nest already provided 12 new ducklings this year. Recently another wood duck has been laying there and a couple of days ago she started to incubate. So this year’s wood duck season isn’t done yet and you can expect another Jump Day! My estimate is this will occur sometime between June 29th and July 4th. She has 7 eggs. Although I’ve seen a hooded merganser around a few times, all of the eggs are wood duck eggs. No ducks are visiting the South nest and only rarely has one checked out the West nest box, so it looks like those are done for the year.

I’ll start streaming the East nest box camera in a couple of weeks and as usual I plan to have an outside camera – probably two of them: one one the nest box and one down by the creek – for you to watch on the day when the ducklings jump.

(If you’re new to this and you’d like more information, please see my web site: birdsgv.com If you scroll down you’ll see a “Ducks Info” button.)