Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Where are the ducks?!?

Last week or so we had a pair of ducks in our pond. A few days after that we had TWO pairs of ducks in our pond! We had a pair of wood ducks and a pair of hooded mergansers. After the first pair showed up Wayne figured he better get on the stick and make a duck house!! When the two pairs showed up a few days later we got really excited hoping that they would see the duck house and want to move right in! Well, no such luck. They left and we haven't seen any ducks since. I'm hoping some ducks at some point will want to move in!

Check out the duck house Wayne made though! I had no idea what a duck house even looked like until he built it. Pretty fancy digs if you ask me!



We are pretty sure we witnessed Canada Goose copulation the other morning though! That was interesting. We were hoping the geese would stay and build their nest near our pond since they have been hanging out here quite a bit. However, we see now that they are building their nest at the pond across the street - traitors!

Last year the people across the street were butts and were scaring the geese off their property with guns even though I'm pretty sure they were nesting at the time. I was pretty ticked off and I was hoping they would not go back there to nest this year. Apparently though they pretty much return to the same spot every year for nesting (I guess - I don't really know that much about Canada Geese). So, everybody send a little goose mojo this way that the geese will at least be able to stay there long enough to get their eggs hatched (about 25-30 days from now I think). Then, at least when they are hatched they can waddle all the babies over here to our pond where they will be safe and not scared away by a bunch of jerks. Ugh.............some people!!!!!

7 comments:

Bubblesknits said...

This may be a silly question, but how do the ducks get in the duck house? That one hole just looks so small in the picture.

Lisa said...

Bubblesknits asked the question I wanted to ask! And call me stoopid (I AM just a city girl after all) but how do they actually get up to it? I mean, I know they can fly, but how can their webbed feet hang on like a "regular" bird's so they can get in there. Stop laughing, Kilt Boy. I can hear you from here.

Warlock said...

All the "how to" sites I found through my Googling pretty much gave the same dimensions for the height, width and depth as well as the size of the entrance hole. I thought it looked a little small myself but I am no expert and the sites I got my plans from were run by "experts". The hole is 4"x3".

Knit Witch said...

Ya know - we are really city folk too so most of what we do here is a learning experiment!!! But yes, ducks can land in trees and hang onto branches with their webbed feet like other birds can. Though you don't see them doing this too often. And, ducks are really pretty small! I was really surprised about this when they started hanging around our house. I thought they would be bigger but they are probably about the size of a crow (maybe a bit smaller and more round). They look tiny compared to the Canada Geese that hang around here! Anyway, we'll see what happens. Wayne looked up the directions and made it according to "specs" but that does not always mean that is what the ducks will like!!!!

Yvonne said...

Wood ducks are VERY shy! Consider yourself lucky that they're hanging out at your house!!

Ash said...

Wild ducks that fly are very small indeed. Compared with ducks my family raised from the feed store when I was growing up, they were only half the size.

The only experience I've had with a "Duck house" has been one on the ground that came with the house my parent's bought, which was just a box with a hole in it for the ducks to walk into and lay eggs. Hope you guys get some new tenants!

judith said...

Didn't ya'll know your pond is like the no tell motel for ducks and geese?

Seriously, have you tried to put some of those geese decoys around your pond? One of my sister's neighbors in town put some out in her yard, that she picked up at a "Kicking my Hunting Husband out of the house sale" (like a garage sale only with a longer name and more omph.) She had them in her yard a couple of days and looked out to find real geese out there with them.