Merganser – west camera is live

There’s been a lot of activity in the west nest in the last couple of days and a merganser has been in this nest box all morning today. As I mentioned in my last post, the merganser has been laying eggs every other day or so. Wood ducks have also been coming into the west nest to leave eggs. This morning two wood ducks visited for about 15 minutes each, and then the merganser arrived and stayed for hours, from about 8:45 until now; that is, she’s in there right now as I start to write this at 12:20, but she’s now covering up the eggs which means she’ll be gone (for a while or a day or two?) when you see this post … and that just happened; she’s gone. I’m going to go out and get a count … … it’s 5 wood duck and 6 merganser eggs.

I hope the merganser will claim the west nest. We’ve had a merganser family here many times in the past, but only in the south nest box. The west nest box is special: I built it to allow a camera to look in from the side rather than down from the top and the camera is closer than in the other two nest boxes. It would be fun so see the mergansers from this view. I really hope she stays!

I’ve now replaced the outdoor view of the east nest and the creek that I was streaming (kind of a placeholder; not much to see most of the time) with the inside view of the west nest. (To watch go to birdsgv.com and use the “Live Cameras” button.)

As previously reported, the wood duck in the east nest is incubating. She’s in the nest box most of the time. Not much is happening in the south nest, a few visits here and there but no eggs yet.