Wood Duck Monitoring

From mid-March through the end of June, CBEC volunteers engage in monitoring wood duck boxes. This entails is visiting four or five wood duck boxes, checking for nesting activity and observing the hatching of ducklings.

In early March, an orientation for volunteers teaches them the monitoring protocol, organizes them into teams, preps equipment and readies everyone for the wood duck nesting season.

Volunteer teams check the boxes once a week until the wood ducks have a full clutch (approximately 14 – 16 eggs covered with 2” of down), and then they return in about 30 days to see if the ducklings hatched. Data for each visit is recorded and, at the end of the season, submitted to the Maryland DNR Wood Duck Initiative Program.

CBEC’s monitoring programs are fun to do and great learning opportunities. If you’re monitoring wood duck boxes and are there at the right time, you may be lucky enough to see ducklings take their “leap of faith” out of the box!