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The South and West nest boxes have not changed; still the same number of eggs and two wood ducks incubating diligently, estimated hatch date May 27th plus or minus a few days for both nests, since they started on the same day. South: 15 wood duck eggs, 2 hooded merganser eggs. West: 9 wood duck eggs.

The East nest has been visited by a duck (or maybe two) who is not the resident, incubating duck, and this other duck has left some eggs. There are now 12: the 10 original eggs and 2 more added in recent days. The latter have no chance of hatching with the others since it takes about 30 days of incubation to create a duckling that’s ready to hatch and the new eggs are more than a week behind. The East nest duck started incubating on May 5th and hatching is due on June 4th plus or minus a few days .

That’s how it goes for wood ducks: they lay eggs in other duck’s nests. If that happens before incubation starts then all of them can hatch together. Our record here is 31 eggs which is probably the work of 3 or 4 ducks, because one duck will typically lay about 9 to 12 eggs over about 2 weeks of time. 25 of the 31 eggs hatched. Perhaps a dozen were from the actual mother, the rest from other ducks. Those that hatch are all cared for by the one duck who incubates. For more information on this kind of odd behavior see the “Ducks Info” link on the birdsgv.com home page and then go to the “Eggs & Dumping” topic.

The incubating duck was in the East nest box while a visiting female and her mate were resting on the roof today.
The male stays close to the female while she is laying which lasts about 2 weeks. Only the female does the rest of the work, incubating for a month and taking care of the ducklings for about 2 months.

More Ducklings about June 4th

Yesterday the East nest duck started to incubate her 10 eggs. That means hatching should occur between June 1st and June 7th. The other two started on the same day and have an estimated hatching date as previously mentioned: between May 24th and 30th.

All three are now in their nest boxes for most of the day and all night, leaving only briefly for an hour or so to go out for food. The screenshot pictures below were taken this evening so they are gray rather than in color; the infrared light that illuminates the nest box at night does not show colors. Like us, ducks do not see infrared so they think it’s dark in there.

You may notice a large (and sometimes lopsided) bulge in the ducks neck/chest area as shown in this photo. This is the duck’s crop, a muscular pouch that they fill with food as fast as they can gobble it for processing later on when they’re back in the nest.

They have surrounded themselves with lots of down. They tuck this blanket all around themselves to help insulate the eggs and they use it to cover the eggs when they go out for food.

Ducklings approx May 27th

Last Thursday the 27th both the West and South ducks started to stay throughout the day and night. Wood duck incubation is about 30 days plus or minus three, so that means ducklings should appear sometime around the 27th of May.

A wood duck has added another egg to the South nest so it now has 17: 2 hooded merganser and 15 wood duck eggs. Another wood duck egg also has appeared in the West nest so that’s 9 there. These late eggs were provided by a different duck than the one which is incubating. The incubating duck was done laying when that started. Typically eggs added late do not hatch with the others since their ~30 day development time got a late start.

A wood duck has been laying about 1 egg per day in the East nest although she didn’t add one today. There are now 6 in the East nest box. Incubation has not started there.

If you look at the cameras at birdsgv.com you will almost always see a duck in the South and West nest boxes, except in the evening when they leave for about an hour to find food.

More eggs!

All three cameras are now online at birdsgv.com: East, West, and South

South nest: 15 eggs
Two wood ducks and a hooded merganser are all laying eggs in the South nest. The count has gone up from 10 to 15 in just two days: 13 wood duck eggs and 2 hooded merganser eggs. As previously described, two wood ducks continue to peacefully occupy the nest box each morning. One of them for an hour or a few, the other for 10 or 20 minutes, but both are laying. One of them (the one that stays longest) is feathering the nest which often precedes the start of incubation by a few days or so.

West nest: 7 eggs
The west nest duck has been spending all night in the nest box for the past two nights – a clear sign that the start of incubation is near – and she also has added lots of feathers. She isn’t yet staying during the day but will probably start that soon. Once she starts incubating both day and night, the ducklings will hatch 30 days later give or take a few days. As far as I know, just one duck is laying in this nest box.

East nest: 2 eggs
One duck is also laying in the East nest and there are now 2 eggs there.

Eggs from the South nest box today. The two hooded merganser eggs are the larger, whiter eggs on the right. (The ducks cannot detect and do not care that I removed the eggs for counting … as long as I put them back again! Other ducks come in and rearrange the eggs too, and ducks don’t use their sense of smell to warn of danger in the way that many animals do.)

Duck on Duck again

South Nest:

Two ducks continue to share the South nest box so the eggs there are increasing by two per day. Today one duck was standing and then sitting right on top of the other (the nest box is small) and they both seemed fine with that. See the photos below.

Also this afternoon the female hooded merganser went into the South nest for about 10 minutes and left an egg. So today the South nest egg count went up by 3 and there are now 10. There will be a mixed brood no matter which one: wood duck 1, wood duck 2, or the merganser, ends up doing all of the incubating and duckling-raising.

This has happened before as shown in this picture from 2018. There are 7 wood duck ducklings on the left, 3 quite different looking hooded merganser ducklings on the right, and they all have the wood duck as their mom.

West nest:

The west nest box is also visited regularly each morning by a wood duck. This morning there were 5 eggs.

East nest:

Finally, after this nest was mostly ignored during the past weeks, a duck provided an egg this morning so there is now 1 egg there. It’s odd: in many years this nest has been the first to have progress. If this keeps up for another day or two I’ll turn on streaming for its camera.

All nests:

Ducks are now in the nest boxes for more than an hour, sometimes a couple of hours with multiple visits each day, so your chance of seeing activity on the cameras is good, especially in the morning.

One wood duck on top of the other in the South nest this morning.
The one on top stayed about 10 minutes. When she moved to get ready to leave, there was her egg.
The other duck pulled the new egg into the clutch with the others. She was in the nest for a couple of hours. (Clouds were blocking the sun, so this image is gray.)
In the afternoon a hooded merganser also was in the South nest for a short visit, about 10 minutes, but she did leave an egg …
… and it’s easy to tell the eggs apart: the merganser egg is in the center (I put it there for this picture) and it’s larger, rounder, and whiter than the wood duck eggs. I uncover the eggs to check the nest, then put the wood shavings back. The ducks don’t care.