So, a presently ongoing saga. A couple of weeks ago I heard an odd call while out on the back deck of Walkabout Estates Plus, overlooking the pond – I didn’t recognize it but thought it seemed familiar. Then, on a hunch, I got out the binoculars and began scanning the area, and confirmed my suspicion: out in a secondary pool some distance off, I could see some wood ducks (Aix sponsa.) This was excellent, because I’ve rarely even spotted them in the wild and certainly have no wild pics of them.
Now, a word about the pond. It’s closer to being a bayou, stretching for a few hundred meters but separated into multiple pools, all bordered by bald cypress trees – shallow, but as we found out last week, quite boggy/muddy in the bottom, so a bad choice for wading. Near Walkabout Manor, it more resembles a pond, but as it gets further down (where I spotted the ducks,) it’s much more of a swamp. This is fine, we weren’t looking for a place to go boating or swimming, but it does mean access is not a casual stroll. Last week I made the attempt to creep up on the ducks and get some pics, but this proved easier typed than accomplished.
It doesn’t help at all that the one perspective that I’ve managed so far has been shooting almost due south, so straight into the sun and the sun’s reflection from the water. This is full frame at 600mm, peeking through the intervening foliage because getting past it would have brought me into open sunlight and full sight. But there’s something in there…
A tighter crop reveals more, though:
That’s enough to see the teardrop white marking around the eye and the faint nap of the ‘hood,’ indicating that this is a female wood duck. Which is as good as I got that day. It was easier to see the mallards (Anas platyrhynchos.)
Further attempts proved how spooky they were, as they took flight when I became too obvious, and I might have to construct a blind. But the first thing to construct was a nest box for the wood ducks, which was accomplished when I found some old shelves that were the perfect size.
This is based on plans found here, and is only pine, but we had some appropriately-colored stain handy, so that augmented the old brown stain that was already on the shelves (as well as some splashes of white paint from some time in the past.) Hopefully this will keep it lasting a little longer than a single season – it really should be made from cypress or cedar, but those are completely unavailable in the right size around here.
The plans called for hardware cloth on the inside under the entry hole, but I simply gouged the wood with a circular saw. This is to give the ducklings an easy surface to grip with the nails on their toes when they climb out, quite soon after hatching; they’ll then spend the next few weeks on the pond itself with the mother, so the box serves only to incubate the eggs. The ducklings cannot fly when they bail the nest, still looking like little gold and brown cat toys, but they withstand drops from quite significant heights, even onto solid ground – you need to look up videos of them leaving the nest, because the bouncing is unreal.
Having finished the nest box but still deciding where it’s going to be mounted (and if it will be joined by one or two more,) I went out again yesterday to try again for some decent pics of the potential future occupants. Long story short: I spotted them three times, and never could get the camera even locked on before they took flight. This will definitely be challenging.
But I did find some other items of interest.
That’s evidence of beaver activity, and it’s right on the far side of the main pool – it’s also only a day or two old. The Girlfriend and I were almost positive that we saw one in the main pool early one morning, but have seen no subsequent sign of them since, until now. I found trails through the tall grasses, and a couple of crossover spots between the pond and the stream that runs behind it.
Now, while everyone knows beavers have lodges, I have yet to see the typical depiction of a mound out in the middle of the beaver pond; every time here in NC, it’s been dug into the banks of the pond, stream, or lake instead, and the quality of the pond edges on the property, the slow descent into bog and mud, convinced me that the lodges would be on the stream and not the pond. I was still attempting to get pics of the wood ducks, so I was exploring and stalking a pair that seemed to be staying just out of sight along the edge of the stream.
At one point, I spooked a raptor, likely our resident red-shouldered hawk, from its perch near the stream, where it swooped low across the water and produced a loud splash – quite curious, because it was nowhere near low enough to have struck the water itself, not to mention that such birds aren’t water hunters or divers. I thought it might have come low enough to try for a wood duck. The view was obscured by dense woods right to the stream edge, so I tried working closer, causing the same bird to fly off again with another splash; I could see enough of the water and flight path to know it was nearly two meters off the water, so what was this all about? I never saw a wood duck during this, nor heard any alarms.
A few meters further on, as I was skirting a pile of discarded bamboo (that I surmised the previous residents had left behind while clearing paths around the pond,) I heard another splash, this time on my side of the stream and very close, almost underneath me. What was truly confusing was that I could see the water clearly enough from there to observe no ripples at all – what the hell? You’ve probably pieced it together faster than I did, but it really only took a moment of looking around to make me realize that the pile of bamboo and sticks I was standing right alongside was shielding over the top opening of the lodge, and I had been spotted by a beaver within.
You can see the stream in the background and the dark opening in the middle there, going deeper than it seems at first, with an obvious beaver stick poking out at bottom – I had been too busy watching the water to be looking closely towards my feet. Yeah, yeah, I know, excuses excuses, but the whole point was to try and see the wood ducks before they saw me.
This is actually pretty easy to get to, so I’ll be able to keep an eye on it – kind of. Beavers are primarily nocturnal, so even getting right up next to it won’t mean squat without light. But I’m already planning to do a small amount of ground clearing, mostly to get the noisy stuff out from underfoot so I can walk through the area without making as much noise, which can only help. With luck, maybe I’ll find an area on the edge of the stream where I can achieve a decently clear view, and perhaps create a blind. Now’s the time to be doing this, before the spring brings all the critter activity.