At the park: 51

I finally got my recordkeeping caught up for the Wood Duck/Hooded Merganser nesting season. Heck, most of these birds are probably on their way to Florida and points south by now.

The birds made good use of the boxes this year, especially the two new ones that we installed in February. In 16 boxes, we had 12 nesting attempts, all of them successful. No dump nests: our largest clutch was a combined Wood Duck/Hooded Merganser nest with 18 eggs, of which 16 hatched.

The mergs continue to produce more than the woodies for the third year running. 70 HM eggs laid, 63 hatched; 57 WD eggs laid, 46 hatched. The count for the woodies is probably a little low, as we had one box where we never did get a complete egg count. The Wood Ducks made as many nests as the Hooded Mergansers (5 each, with 2 mixed), but their clutches were, on the average, smaller.

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart