Robin Arnold Art

 I'm fairly certain this is the pair who have claimed the pond box as their own. Yesterday afternoon the female went into the box and the male took a five hour nap on top of it. I hurried home from work so I could get a photo but Gena said they both flew away about five minutes before I got home. I took this photo last week of the duck eggs in the pond nest box. I checked for two successive  mornings after I took this photo and it went from four eggs to six and from six to nine which indicated more than one duck is laying in this box. After the female is done laying eggs she pulls out her own downy breast feathers and mixes  them in with the wood  chips for extra warmth. This photo was taken two days ago on 5/5/15.  Let the incubation begin!

On April 24, just over a week ago, I wrote about the two wood duck nest boxes we put up on our property. The box we put on the back edge of the pond is visible from our house and with our binoculars we've been able to watch ducks, sparrows and swallows checking it out. Nest box on the edge of the pond We're not experts on monitoring nest boxes of any kind so after doing a little research we discovered that the boxes should be checked in the morning to help keep raccoons away. I assume this is because the scent we leave behind will have a chance to dissipate before the racoons come out in the early evening. So every morning I have checked on our two boxes. The one on the edge of the marsh hasn't seen much activity yet but I'm pulling a huge wad of twigs, feathers, etc. out of the "pond box" that the house sparrows are trying to take over. Thursday morning I mistakenly thought the box was empty and when I started to open it a female wood duck flew out...

There is still a lot of snow on the ground but this week in northwest Ohio the temps are actually above normal. I'm hoping that by the end of the week sections of our marsh and pond will thaw and maybe, just maybe, a few ducks will fly in. In years past we've had gadwalls, northern shovelers, green-winged teal, redheads, lesser scaup and blue-winged teal fly in to our 12 acres and it's not uncommon for hooded mergansers and wood ducks to nest on our property. Two male lesser scaups pursuing a female scaup on our pond. Some harbingers of spring can only be heard, not seen. Two mornings ago the calls of sandhill cranes could be heard coming from a marsh east of us along with a killdeer that was in a marsh southwest of us. Add to that the cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, Canada geese and one lone titmouse closer to our house and it's like nature's symphony enjoyed in surround sound. In the following video you can hear some of the sounds of spring while watchin...