Nesting Study of Wood Ducks

Abstract

Shortly after moving into a new home along the Mississippi River just north of Minneapolis, I became aware of several pairs of wood ducks nesting in hollow basswood trees on the nearby river banks. This extreme accessibility of the birds induced me to begin a study of certain phases of the nesting activities of the birds. A nest box was accepted by them in 1947. Later this box was reconstructed with a floating floor and an alarm clock-cake pan recording apparatus as shown in Figure 1. This mechanized box was occupied by a wood duck, possibly the same female, for the three succeeding seasons, 1948, 1949, and 1950. She was not banded during the earlier part of the work since it was feared she would be seriously disturbed or might even desert her nest as a result, and the recording of nesting data seemed more important than the banding of the bird. She was finally banded just before the young left the nest during the spring of 1950. At first only the nesting rhythm or peri ds of nest attentiveness were recorded and studied. Later some thermocouple temperature readings were taken as a check on the effectiveness of the down