Nest boxes, game laws bring wood duck back from brink of extinction

 

A drake wood duck watches his mate investigate nest sites/Jim McCormac

Nest boxes, game laws bring wood duck back from brink of extinction

Columbus Dispatch
May 7, 2023

NATURE
Jim McCormac

Few birds, in Ohio or anywhere else, can rival the drake wood duck for sheer gaudiness. It’s as if a team of great artists was commissioned to design and color the fowl. Rodin sculpted the graceful neck, ornate crest and rudderlike tail. Picasso laid out the duck’s ornate Cubist patterning. Dali added whimsical flourishes to complete the flashy package. As is usual with waterfowl, the female is much more muted. She has her own charms, though, just not the over-the-top gaudiness of the male.

As exotic as the wood duck may seem, it is a common bird in our parts. But it wasn’t always so. During the Wild West days of unregulated market hunting, the bird’s fate appeared much grimmer. By the early 1900s, wood duck populations had plummeted so badly that some ornithologists were predicting its extinction by 1930.

Fortunately for the birds — and us — game laws were enacted and enforced, which stopped the carnage. Today, the “woodie” is once again a very common species.

On April 26, I visited an excellent local natural area called Emily Traphagen Park, which is owned and managed by Preservation Parks of Delaware County. Soon after strolling into an older-growth woodland featuring a number of massive American beech trees, I saw some large birds high in the limbs.

Wood ducks! A pair was investigating the upper reaches of the beech for suitable nest sites. The aptly named wood duck is one of a half-dozen species of North American fowl that utilize cavities for nesting. In Ohio, the common and hooded mergansers are the only other cavity-nesting ducks.

Nest boxes played a key role in the relatively rapid recovery of wood ducks following implementation of hunting regulations. The rocket-shaped structures mounted on poles or trees are common sights around rivers and wetlands. Untold legions of boxes stipple the landscape within the range of the woodie, which is mostly the eastern U.S. and adjacent Canada. The ducks take readily to them.

However, the birds are probably more prone to use natural tree cavities if they’re available. The pair I watched spent much time flying from cavity to cavity, with the female doing all of the house inspections. The male stayed close at hand, perched on a limb and offering his two cents. The female calls the housing shots, though. He is just an interested observer.

Some holes were too small to squeeze in, although she tried. One that seemed to be especially pleasing was a large cavity about 40 feet up a beech. The hen spent a few minutes checking it out and upon emerging, several minutes of debate was had between the birds.

Once a hole is chosen, the hen will lay 10-12 eggs, which will hatch about 30 days later. Wood duck chicks are precocial — they can move about almost immediately. About a day after hatching, the chicks are ready to leave the nest.

Therein lies the rub if you are a wood duck chick. The tiny birds must get from a lofty arboreal nest to the ground. How so? They jump. Life begins with a bounce. The hen flies to the ground and makes soft clucks to goad the youngsters from the hole. With little hesitation, the ducklings scramble from the hole and freefall to the forest floor.

Regardless of the height, the tiny fluffballs are seldom if ever hurt. The highest documented nest height was 291 feet and those chicks jumped without incident. Once all have landed, the hen marches them to the closest water to begin the next phase of their life.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

A female wood duck by a particularly interesting beech cavity/Jim McCormac