A happy, then sad, and now hopefully happy story about ducks and gardening with nest boxes. So last Christmas I bought lots of different nest boxes and put them up around our new bush home. Then I scooted off to work in the Central Desert region for many months, meanwhile my husband has been getting pretty friendly with the local wood ducks. On my first day home a week ago, I poked my nose into all the nest boxes, and found a ringtail possum in the glider box, and a brush tail possum in the black cockatoo/wood duck box. Cool, I thought.
Then a few days later I saw a wood duck disappearing into the wood duck box for a short while, then she flew away. I poked my nose back inside the box later that day, and alas discovered one partly chewed duck egg, and just the remains of one other.
Likely a brush tail possum’s entree me thinks, no chance Mrs Wood would be back after destruction of her eggs. So I heaved the massive box down and put it on our porch for a day, pondering a plan B.
The following morning I hear Mrs Wood’s Waaaark wak wak wak and felt sad, thinking she’d discovered the nest box gone. Later that morning after the rain stopped, I looked inside the nest box on our back porch for some reason?? and discovered a new duck egg!! She’d seen the nest box on our back porch, walked over and sat in it, and laid that egg.
Onto Google I immediately went, in search of ideas for possum barriers for trees, then hightailed it to Bunnings for some thick polycarbonate plastic. Rigged up two possum tree guards (above and below) late that afternoon and heaved the nest box back up the tree, together with a couple of wildlife camera traps to catch any possum or duck action, and crossed my fingers for the next day. Would she? Surely not!
Well she did! (isn’t that quite incredible?) There are now two duck eggs in the wood duck box, and she’s visited the box twice today according to my wildlife camera. All my fingers and toes are crossed that everything goes well for Mrs Wood and her eggs, it would be lovely to see ducklings soon. Goes to show that wildlife and people can work together 🙂
