Wood Ducks & Nesting Boxes with Matt Ferry

Matt Ferry, Ducks Unlimited volunteer with the Pentagon chapter, joins this episode of Highballs & BS presented by Gundog Outdoors. We discuss how he started working the wood duck nesting box program in Virginia, variables in location selection and usage, what to consider if you place nesting boxes, and some of the crazy things he’s seen over the years.  

Ducks Unlimited Wood Duck Box Plans

Lee Kjos on the Standard Sportsman Podcast

‘A Quest for Cacklers’ in the latest DU Magazine 

Check out B.S. Calls via Instagram and website for custom made hand turned duck and goose calls.

Thank you to the podcast series sponsor Gundog Outdoors! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

All right, welcome to this episode of High Balls and BS presented by Gundog Outdoors. This is the first part of March and seasons are wrapped up, unless, of course, you're chasing snow geese back north. Between the calendars and work schedules, I'm excited to bring the final three episodes to you soon. Today's guest and subject is certainly timely and something to hopefully folks revisit before next spring as well. But I'm joined by Matt Ferry of the Pentagon Ducks Unlimited chapter. Hope I got the right chapter, Matt. That's correct. Here in Northern Virginia, and he runs much of the wood duck nesting box program for the region as well. But really appreciate you taking time this evening to join me, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Absolutely. And Sean, thank you again for the platform to talk about the goodness of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, no, certainly. And so I I'll I'll back up a little bit. I've always had a hot soft spot for wood ducks, my dad and I out in Oregon. They were obviously greenheads, everybody loves. And we get some wood ducks now and then, but when with the area thick, it was really good. We just kind of always enjoyed them because you know, fantastic table fare as well. But we would put up some wood duck boxes in the slough of the place that we did a lot of hunting, just kind of helped going. So it's always kind of been interested in wood duck nesting boxes and trying to learn more. And then I had talked to Max Fizzano was on last year or last season and offline. We we had talked, he mentioned all the work that you do. And I can't remember the thousands of broods, I think just last year alone he had mentioned. So I was like, Well, I definitely want to talk to Matt and learn more. It was great to go out in the field with you guys the other day as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

No, uh well, you know, first of all, when you and I had originally connected and talked about it, I thought that it might be a good way to start if you came out and did box checks with us just to get a feel for what we do and how we do it before we did the podcast. And I'm happy and glad that you know you and Liam and John and Alex were able to come out this past weekend and get a feel for how we do it and you know, like why we do it and the way that we do it. So for that, I'm I'm really glad that and I, you know, I'm hopeful that you guys enjoyed it. I enjoy it. I sound a little bit kind of geeky about it, but it's kind of like every time I get a chance to check boxes, it's like Christmas morning for me, right? Like being able to see, like, what do we got? Let's take a look, right? And uh that's part of the reason that I enjoy what we do, and particularly with the key getting the kids involved. I mean, having the kids involved is a really big part of it. And I think I mentioned to you, like, I've got an 11-year-old daughter, and she's been crawling ladders and checking in wood duck boxes since she was four. And it's one of those things where it's kind of like she doesn't get a choice because her dad's a duck hunter.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So yeah. Yeah, it's it's kind of funny with kids sometimes. They kind of lack of returns, they kind of get forced in some of our adventures and hobbies. But once they get into it, they just really enjoy it. You see the eyes light up, and doing the nesting boxes is a great way for them to kind of get a little bit of a chance to nerd out and and get into the science. Like, so for instance, I know most listeners know, so Liam, my oldest, he's 12, and so he's doing biology or life sciences and middle school. So he's I was talking it up beforehand, and then afterwards, like, well, you can talk to your science teacher about. He's like, Oh, yeah. And just kind of really dug it and got into it. It was great. And you know, that's a it's a great project to to get kids involved with. So I'll back up a little bit. So, I mean, I think most everybody is knows, but if they don't, wood ducks are a cavity nester. You're not building hen house or hen houses or hen nests like you do with mallards. You know, you're basically making a wooden box that can go either to a tree or it can go to a post, right? Correct, correct. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I think originally, and I'd have to, I probably should know this and know the history of it. And I probably did at one time, but I'm forgetting. But I believe that it was originally started at a wildlife refuge in Illinois, and you had a couple of biologists, and I want to say this was in the 50s, and they had experimented and built boxes out of plywood. Okay, and they realized that it worked, right? And that's kind of where the whole movement for wood duck boxes started. So it's probably 70 years old, 70 plus, right? So the idea being, I mean, I think I shared this with you when we met last weekend, is that on the Atlantic flyway, and I could be wrong on this, but I had heard at one time the mid-Atlantic region, at least where the largest concentration of nesting wood ducks is within, I think, a 10 to 15 mile radius of Quantico, Virginia. Oh, really? And so stretching over to the Maryland side across the other side of the river, but like we're right in, like we are in the we're on the X, right? And that's part of why we do it where we do it. It's also part of why we get the results in the production that we do because we're in the right spot.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Oh, interesting. I didn't realize that. So I got so who did and you explained it to me, but how did you get into this program and who did you learn from?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Well, i i if I may, there's a little bit of a longer story to this. So my family, and maybe like you, you know, I come from a hunting family, right? And my father and my mother are from the same small town in central West Missouri, about two hours south of Kansas City. The town is Nevada, it's spelled like Nevada, but it's Nevada, Missouri. And if you're from there, it's Missouri. And it's about 18 to 20 miles from Fort Scott, Kansas, so it's right on the border. So my dad had grown up shooting mallards in flooded pit oaks. And then he came out to Washington, D.C. with my mom in 1970, was working on the hill, and realized that they didn't have a lot of ducks out here. So he ended up getting involved with got on a goose lease over in Talbot County near St. Michael's Royal Oak on Plain Dealing Creek. And, you know, we used to go over as kids. And I think my father was always glad that he had sons because as soon as we were old enough to carry stuff, we were running decoy bags out of you know to the pits and doing the whole bed. But the story, the story as it's told to me, I don't remember it because I was too young to remember it, is they were the Bellevue Oxford Ferry, I think we're on the Bellevue side, and they would have a lot of people down there feeding ducks. Right. And so we're down there, and I don't know how old I was. I think my brother was, I mean, he was probably a toddler, so I might have been five or six or seven, who knows, whatever it was. And you know, I'm there and we're feeding the ducks, and I hear this guy, my dad and my mom are behind me, and I hear this guy go, What kind of duck is that? Is that you know, is that a McGanzer? And so I turned to the guy and I said, Hell no, man, that's a wood duck. And of course, my mom gets upset with my dad, like, Dan, where does he get like and my dad's going, I don't know where you guys, you know, this whole bed. And so perhaps I've had a duck crush on woodies since I was in single digits, right? But they've always kind of been the bird that, you know, I love mallards and I love teal and I love all you know, pintails and all the other stuff, but woodies are kind of my jam. So that's kind of how that, that's how it started. Now, in terms of wood duck boxes, I really didn't, you know, like I used to hunt a lot at McKee Becher's in Montgomery County in Poolsville. Yeah, and I would see the boxes out there in the marsh in the flooded timber and you know in the swamps or doing whatever. I really didn't get connected formally to a wood duck box program until about 2010. And so I was working for Customs and Border Protection in Crystal City, Virginia, and there was a former retired Army Ranger who I think had seen, you know, my screensaver had seen a picture of my dog coming back with a mallard. And he said, Hey, he goes, you know, you should, you know, I'm part of this Pentagon chapter, you should come out. And I said, All right, so I went out. And so then I would say I probably got into it in about 2011. And the program that we had, which is the same one that you attended, was at Mason Neck, right? So Mason Neck's got half, it's about half and half in terms of Virginia State Park and also Elizabeth Hartwell National Wildlife Refuge, which was originally set up for bald eagles. So, you know, I got into it. We would go check the boxes. I was like, all right, you know, and then over time, as I got more into it, and I realized I go, why are we checking these boxes that never produce and we keep putting in bedding and they never produce? And so I started asking questions and I sort of, you know, like and it got to a point where we're like, well, Matt, why don't you run you run it? I said, okay, I'll run it. You got questions, you you figure it out. Exactly, right? So, of course, being the person that kind of, if I don't know something, I'll figure it out, do the research, or I'll find somebody who knows it. Right. Yeah. So I reached out, there's a gentleman named Cliff Brown who started the Maryland Wood Duck Initiative. And I want to say it was like early aughts. I don't exactly remember when he started it, but I think he was, I want to say he was like ducks unlimited conservationist of the year in like 04, 05. But I found out he lives in DC. And so I reached out to him and I just said, hey, I need help. And of course, he was more than willing to help. He was more than willing to kind of explain to me kind of how to do stuff. And you know, this is a guy that runs, I mean, he's he manages over 1800 boxes in the state of Maryland. And I think he produces somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,500 ducklings a year. And this guy has seen everything and anything, right? And so he was always willing to answer the phone, he was always willing to call me back. And so when I would call him with a question, he'd be like, Oh, I remember back in whatever year it was, we had to deal with you're like, try this, all right. And I would try it, and guess what? It would work, John. Like it always worked, and so that's kind of where it started. But he was a big numbers guy, right? If you don't have numbers or results, the box doesn't exist, right? Like, and you need the numbers because the numbers help shape what you do and how you do it. And so that's kind of where I really started kind of, and I'm I'm kind of a numbers guy anyhow. And so I started tracking it and being able to see trending and being able to see the areas. And if you had a section, like for instance, Mason neck is a perfect example. We had a section where we had really like our hit rate on a certain number of boxes was 100%. And I'm sitting there kind of going, well, the logical thing to do next is to add more boxes. So guess what? We added more boxes, and guess what? They all produced, and so you kind of let the numbers shape where you go, what you do, which boxes you pull, which boxes you, you know, like you add more to, like all of this stuff, like trust the numbers. And so a lot of that I learned from Cliff.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Okay. So I'll I'll just back up a little bit. So we get a lot of listeners from around the actually, I should say around the world as well, surprisingly. So Masonnec is a peninsula that sits into Potomac River just south of DC on the Virginia side.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Uh south of Fort Belvoir. Yeah. The Ocaquan runs into the Potomac. There's an area just south of the park called Belmont Bay, and you got to see it, which you got to admit was pretty cool, where we've got we get to go where nobody else gets to go, right? We've got combinations to gates and we get to drive and go check this place out and and see what it has. And it's fantastic, right? The habitat's great. And we've been doing that program since 2006, is when we started it. And so I want to say I've been running it since oh 2011, 2012-ish, kind of give or give or take. And I'm the one who we used to have like 38 boxes, and I went in there and I was like, we have too many boxes that aren't producing. Let's pull them. Like, let's, you know, and and I learned you give a box three years. Okay. If it doesn't work, that means that there's something that the birds don't like, it's in the wrong location, whatever it may be. Just don't try to figure it out because you never will. Pull the box and relocate it. So we went down from like, I think we were at 38 boxes, and I think we went down to like 23. Okay. And then we've built up since then. And I think we're at, I can't I've got to do the count on it. I know we you and I and and John and Todd, we had checked 10 this past weekend. I think I've got 20 or 21 to check on Saturday. So I think we're at about 30-ish. So call it 30. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Okay. That's an interesting thing, too, is one is you give it three years to produce and see results. So something I was I wanted to ask you too is like I know and talking to biologists, especially when it comes to nesting. I mean, all birds are are different, all waterfowl are different. When you have smaller ponds in the prairie pothole region, for instance, mallards won't set up on a big body of water if there's somebody else already nesting there, if there's another mallard brood already already there. So that's why you like smaller, more numerous potholes for for them, for instance. Well, for wood ducks, for the one impoundment, the the DU impoundment there, and Mason Eck, we had what four bottles. And that does that doesn't bother wood ducks.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Well, you know, uh, so Sean, that's a really good question. And I would answer it with we started with three.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Right? Just because they produce, and I was like, you know, let's let's try let's experiment. Like a a big part of this is experimenting, right? The problem with experimenting when it comes to wood ducks is that it takes you a few years to figure out if the experiment worked, which can be frustrating, right? So when we went with you, we had five boxes in that impoundment, right? And we had started originally with three, and so we had expanded to five. And I told you, you know, although I was a little bit disappointed this year because last year all five got used. Okay. Right. And so, you know, I was even thinking about adding a sixth. I'm glad I didn't, obviously at this stage, given, I mean, I don't remember if we had if two out of the five or three out of the five were used, right? But it wasn't as good as it was last year. So I guess a long-winded answer to your question is you can typically, I think the guidance is don't put them in within 25 feet of each other. I I try and do 25 yards. Okay. And what I typically try and do is if I have the hole opened up, I try not to have them across from each other across a body of water, right? So they're facing each other. I will turn one to the right and I'll turn the other one to the left or whatever it ends up being, because one of the things we've discovered, and at least from some of the research that I've done, is that the hens can get very territorial and they can get stressed. And when they get stressed, they're not focusing on laying eggs and nesting, they're focused on basically holding their territory. But that said, like you saw, those five are pretty tight, they're pretty close to each other. They're pointed in different directions so that the hens aren't staring at each other and kind of getting mad about it. But yeah, no, we've had good success there. Although I think part of the takeaway from this year is that that's probably as saturated as I want to make that. I don't want to add any more because I think I'd just add more stress to the hens.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah. Yeah, no, that that makes complete sense on the stress scene and a little bit of territorialness. So and also so another question too, I and you had mentioned it on Sunday, was maybe you could explain a little bit about the nesting process for wood ducks.

unknown 15:37

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

I know I'll share some photos if folks haven't seen them before, the jump days, which are just really cool uh when a photographer captures those.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, and you can find if you go online, you can find some videos of it on YouTube that are just they're really cool. And you know, and and the crazy thing about it, in all the years I've been doing it, I've never seen a jump day. All right, but that's also my takeaway from that is is that it's because I got my job done in February and I'll let nature do its thing, right? All right, so typically hens, I think it's like a I'm pretty certain it's like a 28 to 32 day gestation period. And what a hen will do, and when we you remember when we we went to the first box and I was talking to your son and talking to Alex, and I said, you know, what do we do when we show up at somebody's house? We walk right in, they said, No, you know, you ring the doorbell. I go, what if there's no doorbell? And they said, Well, you knock on the door. And I said, All right, we're gonna knock on the box. So you saw me knock it on the box, nothing happens. I start opening the door, and that hen goes flying out the hole, right? And you know, we look inside and there's two eggs. And so what a hen will do is they will lay an egg a day, right? They will not sit on the eggs until they have finished laying their last egg. That way, when they sit, and what a hen will do is they will fan out their tails. That's why, you know, and I I mentioned you we were talking about dimensions, and part of the challenges of like it can be really hard finding 10-inch wide cedar pose because a lot of it you can find eight inch, but 10 by 8's a little bit tight. I try to go for 10 by 10, you know, like nominal, it's like nine and a quarter, and you know, whatever the math may be, but it allows the hen to be able to sit, fan or tail out, and be able to sit on all the eggs, right? And the idea being that when they hatch, they all hatch on the same day, right? And typically when they hatch, the jump day is typically the next day. And so when she's sitting on the eggs, she's cooing to them, right? She's letting them know. And then when she's inside, you know, like when they've hatched, she's cooing to them so they know who she is, right? And so on jump day, she'll come out of the nest, jump to the bottom, and she's just starts talking to them, right? And they want to be with mom. And so they start climbing up the ladder and they make the jump. And so typically, you can look it up online. I think the clutch size is usually eight to fourteen, eight to sixteen. When we estimate, we usually use 10, just so we we're not overstating, you know, or overestimating how many eggs could have hatched, but it's usually like a first-year hen might lay fewer, but it's usually kind of in that the 10 egg estimate is pretty safe. That it's gonna be somewhere in that. Now, granted, you can count them, like it's not an exact science, Sean. You know, I showed you some of the eggs, some of the membranes. You try to go back through all the egg frag or fragmentation, like you're trying to figure out how many eggs, like good luck with that. I don't know. Like, and so we we kind of make a safe estimate. We try not to overstate, but we're kind of in that vicinity, assuming it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10, right? That's typically what we do.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Okay.

unknown 18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

And so I and I'll back up a little bit again. We were talking about the ladder inside the box. So I think most folks that can recognize what a wood duck box is, but on the what you don't see is on the inside is is you have the next to material cedar shavings, wood shavings that are in there, and then you have usually like a fine wire mesh stapled or drilled on the inside of the wall right below the door, right inside the door. Right. That way, you know, the chicks can crawl up with their toes, up it a little bit, and then jump out. It's usually probably what, maybe five, six inches of ladder that maybe have to use.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Well, we we usually we run it from just at the bottom of the hole. And so what I'll usually do is if you take a you know, like a carpenter's pencil and you kind of or a pen or you kind of bend it at the very top, you staple it on the inside, you can run it down to the full length, you throw in the nesting material. You'll also, if you buy boxes, you'll find a lot of times they'll come, they'll be scored, right? Like where they've got something for because they've got really strong, you know, they come with toenails and they've got strong feet, and they they use that to you know be able to climb and get up the ladder. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Okay.

unknown 20:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

And well, and and talk a little bit more about the layout of of the boxes, but not directly tied to it is as predator guards. Absolutely. And and and how much those are needed. So you mentioned before is like one, if you don't have numbers for a box, it's like not having a box before, but you and if you're not checking it, it's like not having a box. Right. The same thing with predator guards as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah. All right. So I'll explain it in a couple of different ways. One is if you have a box, you don't have a predator guard, and you open that box up and you can see the down from where a hen had nested, but there's zero eggs, right? There's no eggs, there's no egg fragmentation, there's no membranes, there's nothing. I guarantee you it's snake predation, right? And so what snakes will do, whether they drop down from, and we could talk about site location and kind of where I like to put boxes and how I do it later, but if you find a box that's got down inside it but no eggs, chances are either a snake crawled up or it dropped down on top. And what they'll do is they'll move into the box for about a week and they will eat every single egg in the box. And then when they're done, they'll crawl out, right? And so I have never put a box up that didn't have a predator guard on it, and I never will put up a box that doesn't have a predator guard on it, right? Like it's gotta have a guard. If it doesn't have a guard, it's a buffet line for predators, right? And so that's the way I've always looked at it. Is it more expensive? It is, right? Like it's an additional cost, but at the same time, I mean, do you want to have a successful box or not? That's kind of the way I I pitch it.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Exactly. Yeah. So when we initially thought about predator guards, and you read about it in different articles and stuff like that, and the framework of putting them up. Honestly, I personally I would not have thought about snake predation. I'm also from the temperate Lyme Valley of Orange. Not a big yes, we have snakes, but not like you have here. So I would have thought raccoons or or something else getting in to predate the eggs.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So you remember when we were going through the checklist for the paperwork, right? When Alex was my scribe and you know checking stuff off, one of the things that we always look at is we look at the post below the guard. And if you see a lot of scratches on that post, chances are it's a raccoon. Right. A raccoon that's trying to get up and scale and they they can't get around the guard, but you can typically tell that you know a raccoon has been trying or found it or smelled them or whatever it is is trying to get up in there, right? And that's one of the telltale signs. I've talked to other people that had done this long before I got involved in it. And they used to talk about the fact that if they ran their nails on the back of the box and that hen goes bursting out the hole, they know that it's you know, a raccoon is because the hole isn't big enough for the raccoon to crawl in, unless it's like a juvenile, right? They can reach in, you know, they can try to do whatever, but eventually they give up, right? But the point is that that's a telltale sign that you've got you're dealing with raccoons. But my biggest fear is always snakes because the guards keep the raccoons out of it, right? What I usually do when I'm doing a site location, a site visit, is we try to find areas and I make certain that there are no limbs that are overhanging or within at least 20 to 25 feet above the box because you won't believe how aggressive the snakes can be. Right? Like they will climb up a tree, they will go out on a limb, and they will drop right down on the top of the box. You know, and I think I'd shared with you on Sunday that years ago on one of the sections at Mason Neck, we had found there was a little bit of a gap in the guard, and a snake had stuck its head through and couldn't get its head out, and we come out there, and there's like this hanging half of a snake that got eaten by something else just hanging there because it got stuck and couldn't escape. Which, you know, and and I'm not that I hate snakes, but it made me feel good. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yep, exactly. Snakes have their point in the in the life cycle, but uh yeah, I'm not uh me and Indiana Jones have that in common. There you go. I'll give you that. Yeah. So you you talked about site visits, and we're gonna keep nerding out here before I got a more fun question for you. But you're talking about site selection, you had mentioned a stat as far as like how far away a box can be from the water. But in general, what are you looking for? One, the limbs, but two, is does it have to be in the water? Can it be on the shoreline, or if you're looking at a bigger freshwater impoundment, can it be 15 yards into the pond, if it's a shallow pond, or how does that process work?

SPEAKER_01 24:46

All right, well, uh Sean, that's a really good question. And I would respond with so typically when I think about starting a new project, I think of it in a seven to ten box project range, right? Because it's gonna take you a bit to get them installed, drive the posts, do whatever, but you can knock out check-in boxes, seven to ten boxes in a couple of hours in the morning. Right. The idea being that you kind of break it up into those chunks, if you will, because you can get a group together. It's easier to, if there's a way to co-locate them so they're kind of all in the same vicinity, it's gonna help you because one of the biggest problems, and we've seen it, and I've seen it over the years, is that if the box is hard to get to, guess what's gonna happen? It's not gonna get checked because it's a pain to get to, right? So make them as accessible as you possibly can. Now, if you go like, say for instance, we did a project at South County High School in Lorton last spring, and they had like a drainage pond at the bottom of the high school, and it was kind of a steep slope as it went into the water. Like for me, I would, you know, like I made the decision then. I go, we're not gonna put it in the water. We're gonna put it right on the shoreline, we're gonna put it right on the edge. Because one, it's easier to check. Two, the majority, like if we're gonna hand it off to the environmental club or the ecology club at a high school, they're not gonna have waders. They probably won't even have like knee highs, right? Like, make it easy for them to maintain it so that they always like there's no excuse for them not to come back and maintain it. So that's the way I typically look at it. Now, it's not to say that if it is like a shallow slough or pond or whatever it is, a lot of it depends on how big it is, how many boxes you can get on it, figuring out a way so that the holes aren't aiming across the pond to the other one, you know, like being able to kind of situate them. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's no, you know, and I think I'd share with you, and and I know you had asked me one of those questions earlier. I mean, I think the research, they've got proof that, you know, a hen will find a cavity in a tree, they'll do the jump day, and it could be a quarter of a mile away from water and they'll make the trip, which is asking a lot, which kind of ties into, you know, we can talk about this in terms of the general drought conditions we've been dealing with over the last few years. You try to make it as simple as you can, you try to give them the best chance that you can, get them as close to water, good habitat, places with cover, places where they can find food and not get picked off. Right. And so if there's a way to do it where the hen is sitting on the water calling to them and they're jumping into the water, perfect. If it's five to eight to ten feet from the edge of the water, guess what? They're gonna survive because they're little fluff balls. Like they're gonna hit the ground and bounce, and they're gonna find their way to mom, and they're gonna find their way to the water.

unknown 27:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

That's great. So so on the on the funner side, and you check in boxes, you you're knocking on the door before for opening up. What was the one of the funniest things that you've seen or interesting things you've seen checking a box?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

There's a bit of a long list on this one, but I will start with this was at Mason Neck, and I don't know how many years ago. This might have been 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more. We open up the box, and there's a baby screech owl, which and like screech owls, adult screech owls aren't very tall. You can imagine what a baby screech owl looks like. And I didn't know this because I don't know that much about owls. I didn't know owls fell asleep standing up, like they're standing when they sleep, right? And so this baby screech owl is asleep in the corner of the box, facing the corner of the box. And I'm sitting here kind of going, well, you know, I gotta check the box, I gotta see what what we got in here. So I grabbed this baby screech owl, right? And still asleep. And so I hand the baby screech owl, and I've got six or seven, eight kids, and they hand this, and I said, be gentle, right? They hand this little baby screech owl all the way around this circle, and it comes back to me. And I get this baby screech owl, and the outlet wakes up and opens its eyes, it's looking at me, and then it closes its eyes and it goes back to sleep. And so I just stuck it back in the box. That was a wild one. We've had adult screech owls that we've come across. Usually we don't find any snakes just because I do a good job of site selection and having predator guards. We had at Huntley Meadows Park last year, there was the beavers had got had knocked a tree down and it had leaned up against a guard. And I opened up the door and there's a there's a sleeping raccoon inside the box. So I shut that. And I'm curious to go back because I'll be checking that box this coming Sunday, and just to get a feel. One, if if there's a raccoon that got so fat from eating a hen and all the eggs that couldn't get out, I would imagine they probably got out. But is there a hen skeleton inside there, or did they escape? I'm hopeful they did, but I don't know. So I've had a raccoon. We had a couple of weekends ago down at Caledon State Park in King George, Virginia. We opened up a box and there were three flying baby squirrels. And you might ask, well, how do you know they were flying squirrels? And we saw, you know, as we're checking on the box, we watched the mama jump out and glide 20 feet to the ground, which was really cool to watch. And so we had to move the box, and of course, we didn't want to evict the squirrels, so we we drilled it up on a tree, and I told the Virginia master naturalist that I was training that weekend to say, all right, look, here's the deal. They're rodents, they grow pretty quickly, come back in a couple of weeks, relocate the box, but let's let them get done with their job. Other than that, I'm trying to think squirrels, owls, owlets, raccoons. I think that kind of sums up the I mean, I haven't had anything crazier than those.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Okay. And I asked John, he was flying back home from a trip, and so I text him and say, Hey, I'm talking to Matt for the podcast. Is there anything that that you thought of that you wanted to ask him and you didn't think of on Sunday? And so he he sent a couple questions over, but one of them was had you ever seen somebody put like you know, you have like the eagle nest cams. Has somebody ever tried doing that with a wood duck box? Putting like a little wireless camera, like up maybe in the roof.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

All right, it's funny, Sean, that you asked that. All right, so I got these cameras. DU gave me some cameras, and I I've been trying to figure out a way to get them installed. I've had them in the basement, and I haven't I've never gotten around to doing it. I actually think that getting one of those fisheye ones or the ones you can put on the inside of the box at the top, so you could be able to actually see the hen and see the activity inside, I think would be better. So we've thought about it. I've just been perhaps that's on me not to have explored it a little bit more, but do I think it'd be fun and it'd be great to do? Absolutely. And be able to have the video and be able to show, like, here's what we do. Yeah, no, it's something that is kind of on my list of possibly exploring a little bit more. Of course, given how disorganized I am and all the other stuff going on in my life, I just didn't get around to it. But it's one of those things that's kind of on the list. So maybe next, you know, tell John hopefully next year.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

How about that? Okay, I'll let him know that. We'll and we'll we'll hold you on it too. We'll we'll try to help out if we can on that.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

I guess if you show up, yeah, if you guys come back again, which I hope you do, you know, you might be like, hey Matt, whatever the hell, whatever happened to those cameras. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yeah, exactly. And honestly, on the roof thing, again on a tangent, that'd be a good idea. Cause then you could, I mean, with the way trail cams are these days, you could put the little solar panel up there. Yeah, it's charging.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, cool. So you're not making me feel better, Sean, because I haven't done it yet, but I appreciate your I'm just trying to help think outside the box.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Okay. Very, very well played. Well played. Yeah.

unknown 32:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Well, well, speaking of that, and we talked a little bit about on Sunday and texted about it. I know Cedar's usually kind of the gold standard when it comes to making the nasty boxes. And as you mentioned, Cedar starts getting a bit pricey. Yeah. Have you seen and we talked about one example which we can get into a little bit later that you learned from Cliff, but have you noticed the differences and success rate between box materials?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

No, no, no, no, not at all. That has nothing to do with it. So you got to think of it, you can make them out of plywood and it would work. Right. The problem is it's not going to last very long, right? And so, like I know the Maryland Wood Duck Initiative, they've got a connection with a mill down, I think in South Carolina, they get a lot of cypress, which I think it's cheaper than the cedar, although not much, obviously. But I think the problem you run into with the cypress, at least in my experience with it, has been the knots because it's hard to cut, it's hard to get it without splitting it, right? Okay. I've developed kind of a network of other wood duck crazy people like myself, and one of them is a gentleman named Matt Kinecy, who lives up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he is the Delta waterfowl nesting lead for the Northeast. And he was telling me that, you know, of course, he lives in Amish country, he can't throw a stone without hitting an Amish mill, right? And so what he's been doing is been buying pine because it's the cheapest, and then burning it. Shishogi bond or shishogibon, I think is the term. Burning it and then being able to use it that way. And so that's something that we kind of experimented a little bit with, didn't really get it going enough to be able to kind of have some, you know, we we had some kind of working models. I don't think they're quite going to be ready for this year just because we didn't have any real new projects to be able to use them at or use them on. But that's something we would consider doing because cedar is it has become prohibitively expensive. And although it is the choice, but I think there's other ways to do it as well. So I I I you know, like my guidance and and for any of those that you know, like your listeners that are interested in doing it, I would tell them don't worry if you can't find cedar because it's expensive, right? Like there's other wood choices that you could use. You could even do, I mean, you can do you could do plywood. I mean, you just gotta know that it's not gonna last very long and you're gonna have to go back and replace it. But they'll all work. So yeah.

unknown 35:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Well, and uh sub point of that is what is your preferred nesting material in the box?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Cedar chips or cedar shavings, yeah. Cedar shavings. Yeah, as long as it's not sawdust. Okay, like it can't be sawdust. Because if it's sawdust, you know, like when the chicks are born, they're wet, right? And you just can't have stuff sticking to them. And yeah, so you can go and you can buy a huge brick, I mean brick, it's more like the size of a hay bale, right, of cedar at Pet Smart or whatever it ends up being. And it's not gonna cost that much, and honestly, it'll last you years. And you saw how much we had added into the 10 boxes that you and I and John had checked this weekend. I mean, what do we do? Like we might have gone through three, two and a half of the plastic bags that you know, like the 7-Eleven bags. I mean, you know, you've got it and it'll last for years, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Okay, great. Another question John had, and I was I was thinking about how you could do it. And I think the only way you could potentially know is just via banding and monitoring, but is there anything been quartered or or tracked somehow of that a hen will go back to the same box year after year or kind of go to the same rough area?

SPEAKER_01 36:29

So if a hen is successful at that box and they don't get killed during the following hunting season, they will go back to the same box.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

And the great thing about is that the ducklings that she births will be imprinted, they'll come back to the same section. And that kind of ties into when you have an area that that has successful nesting boxes, and you add more boxes to that area. My guess is, and of course, I don't have any scientific research to back this up, but my guess would be I wouldn't be surprised if it's part of her ducklings finding going back to that same area and finding a nest. But typically, yeah, a ham will go back to the same nest.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah.

unknown 37:11

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah, I wasn't exactly sure because I know mallars are kind of good, they're roughly the same area, the same pond, the same, you know, pothole area. And I wasn't sure if if wood ducks would go to the same exact nest or if they kind of go to the same region.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah, my understanding, at least from what I've heard and what I've read, what I've researched, is they'll go back to the same exact box if they were successful before. Okay. Right. And which, you know, I think I mentioned it to you previously, but typically the national average on wood duck box success is about two and three. So it's about a 66% use rate, right? And typically the nesting success is pretty high, it's like 80%, right? And we had talked about as I done some malar nesting cones and kind of supported some of those at Huntley Meadows and also at Fort Belvoir, the use rate on those is like it's national average, it's one in three, right? And I had mentioned to you that there has been absolutely not one confirmation that a black duck has ever used a malar nesting cone, which I find bizarre, but they won't use them. But so, you know, like if you're gonna get into nesting programs, wood duck boxes have a much higher return and might be the one, if it's something that you want to get into, it would be a good one, a good place to start, would be my guidance.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah, and to that point, too, like wood ducks aren't the only cavity nesters either. Like hooded mergangers would use as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Yeah, yep. And so hooded McGangers typically are about two weeks before woodies get there. Okay, and you can usually tell that when I was showing you some of the unhatched eggs that we had found when we did the check, so you could tell the difference between the eggs. So a wood duck egg is a little bit rounder, it's more of a pale tan color to it. The McGanser eggs about the same size, but more oval, and there's kind of a bluish hue to them. And so that's kind of the way you can tell. But they're cavity nesters just like wood ducks are, and I mean, if they get there first, guess what? They're probably gonna keep the nest and the wood duck's gonna go have to find something else.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah, yeah. So on that timing, we are we were talking about this before I hit the cord. We're just before mid-March right now, just before the hides of March. How does this timeline work? So if somebody's looking to put nesting boxes out on their property or get involved in projects with DU or or Delta, what time of year is that typically done?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Okay, so I usually shoot to end everything, all my nesting activities or wood duck box checks or installs or whatever it might be by the middle of March. So I'm coming up on it this weekend. It's not to say that you can't go a little bit later. All right, you could go to the third week and fourth week getting on to April, but they're here. I mean, we know they're here because we knocked on the first box and there was a hadn't already sent them one, right? Like they are here. Yeah, so like my guidance would be shoot for the middle of March. I would say shoot for February, because sometimes, particularly when we have bigger programs that have a lot of boxes, and if it's cold, it's a lot easier getting around on the ice to check them. It like cuts the time in half if it's really mucky. But I would say, regardless of it, if you're really interested in doing it, just do it. Just get it out there. Because the first year, and I always try to tell people, and people ask me all the time, the first year is such like I don't know if I want to say it's like 50-50. Like, like I did a program, I did a box check. We did a project at Widewater State Park East, you know, in Stafford, Virginia. We did a project last February. I went down there to check. The habitat is fantastic. The boxes are perfect, they're in great locations. We checked seven boxes, not one of them got used. Right. And I said to him, I go, look, I go, it's kind of one of these things. First year boxes, that's why I give them three years, right? First year boxes is a real, just kind of it's a roll of dice. You just don't know. Either all of them get used or none of them get used. And I said, you know, don't give up hope. Let's see what it looks like next year, right? So I would tell people that are interested in doing it, it's not too late. Even if you put it in in June, right? Just realize you're not gonna get any nesting, but you got it in, right? And it may take you another cycle to kind of get a feel for whether it produces or not, but by all means, like more boxes is always good.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Cool. No, I I appreciate that, Matt. There's something else I was gonna ask in that regard, but so you're doing work with government agencies. Is everybody kind of been copacetic and and on the same path working with because as just Mason Neck, for an example, you have a state park there, you have a wildlife refuge there.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Somebody's gonna work through their chapter, the local chapter, on on the you know, so when we had pitched the idea originally to the state and to the feds, so the biggest issue, and I think I shared this with you last weekend, is I can put a wood duck box in every day, any day, but I can't necessarily get somebody to come back and maintain it and check it. Right. So part of our pitch to the National Wildlife Refuge side of the park, which it's roughly about half and half, right? And the state side was that we wanted to put boxes in and we promised to maintain and check them if you gave us access. Right. And so we have a great partnership with them, particularly on the federal side. There's a gentleman named Chris Wicker who's kind of been my main contact I deal with over the years. He always wants to know, like, how do we do? How are our numbers? You know, that kind of thing. And we share with him, you know, like last year, for instance, and if you remember, I think I can't remember when we had the big windstorm, but we had some windy conditions, and one of our boxes got obliterated by a massive tree that got blown down. And of course, you know, I shared that with Chris, and he's like, Can you tell me exactly where it is? And I was like, Yeah, I can show you on the map where it is, right? So, and that was the one, if you remember, we were driving out on Anchorage Road, and I'm kind of pointing out the window. That was the one that got crushed by that massive tree, right? We've developed a great relationship, great working relationship, and it's been really good in the sense that I think that's part of what the parks are about in terms of building that community, particularly nature-minded, whether it's birders or whomever it may be. I mean, they've been absolutely wonderful to work with. And my experiences with having worked with Caledon State Park, having worked with Widewater, with Huntley Meadows, which is Fairfax County, with other, like they are very, you know, whether it's biologists or the land managers or whomever it is, they love it because one, it's part of what they do. They've got these great parks with great habitat. They want people coming out and asking questions. Some of the parks have really active friends of Park organizations. More recently, I've had great success with Virginia Master Naturalists being able to maintain programs. Like they maintain the program at Calaman State Park, they maintain the program at Widewater. And being able to have like my biggest fear, worry every time is after we do this project, who's going to be three years, five years, seven, ten years from now, who's going to be maintaining these boxes and reporting back to me with results? That's my number one concern every time I do a new project.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

Yeah. Ironically enough, you spoke of Friends of Parks. That's just uh that's who I work with in my day job being there. There you go. Your relationship.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Yeah. And there's a like take Huntley Meadows, for instance. And and not that I'm trying to pile on and complain about the Huntley Meadows Friends of the Park, but they check the boxes, they check them every week. And I'm just like, look, I go if you know, like I like trying to get them to slow the roll and be like, if you know they're being used, don't stress the hen. Stop checking on counting the eggs, just let them be. You know, like you can figure out when that kind of get an idea of when your jump day may be or do whatever, but just leave them alone. But whatever. I mean, I'm not gonna fault them for it. I'm not gonna get in a fight with them, you know. Like they they clearly are very enthused. And for instance, there's 22 wood duck boxes at Huntley Meadows. The Pentagon chapter paid for, and this is kind of an interesting story, which may tie into others interested in installing their own boxes. And so there was a gentleman named Dave Lawler. Some of your listeners may have met him or known him. He said, you know, he was he was a duck hunter from La Plata. I think he's originally from Northern Virginia. And we have known him for years and supported, they've got eight mallard nesting cones and they've got 22 wood duck boxes. You know, and you've seen that great boardwalk that they've got that goes through the marsh and doing whatever. And so I'm talking with Dave, and he said to me, He's like, Matt, he goes, We're like, we're not getting great production, like we're getting really bad numbers. And of course, my first question is, Well, you got guards on? And he said, Yeah. I go, What kind of guards do you have on? He goes, We have the tubular ones. I go, that's why. I go, how many do you need? He goes, 22. I said, All right, let me work on it. And so our chapter got him 22 guards. And guess what happened? They removed the cylinder guards, they put the other predator guards, and the production rate went through the roof, right? Like, you know, that's kind of the partnership that we have with them because we're all about producing ducks and getting more ducks on on the water. And this is kind of how we do it. And like I've always really, really enjoyed that relationship. I think it's kind of that and Mason Neck are kind of the two events every year I look the most forward to because one, we have the most kids out for them, and two, they always produce, and it's just fun. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Definitely. Well, Matt, I couldn't think of a better summary than that you just put right there. But then also working with your local chapters. I mean, that's a good way to, you know, you're keeping, you know, obviously to use a big national organization, but it's also a good way to kind of give back to your local immediate area as well. Like you know, the the wood ducks and and the nesting habitat you're working on benefits your direct flyaway, your direct absolutely. And not just not just for hunting, but for the biology and and all the other groups that are interested in it, and the bird watchers, like we're all we're all kind of in it together.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Yeah, well, all right. So so Sean, let me phrase it this way, right? Like, I think when we get the numbers back from Mason Neck, we'll be pretty close to 2,000 ducklings we've produced since we started the program. Like, I'd love to tell you that me and the other members of the Pentagon chapter have killed 2,000 wood ducks over the years, right? We haven't, right? So my my point being that we give a lot more back than we take. Exactly. But we also respect the resource and we also make certain that we're doing everything we can to make certain that there is longevity and they're still around, right? And so that's a big part of it. But even like regardless of that, like just the fact that the friendships that we've developed with the Friends of the Park groups, or with Fairfax County Park Authority, or with the state parks, or with the National Wildlife Refuge, like all of these, you know, the biologists and everyone that is involved with this is all looking at the same goal, right? And I don't want to get into, you know, like I've I've given a lot of money to Ducks Unlimited over the years, but I always make certain that it stays in Virginia, right? Like I don't want to go into Memphis, not that I have anything against DU headquarters, but I don't want my money going to North Dakota and South Dakota or going to DU Canada. I want my money staying in Virginia so that it it serves Virginia duck hunters by grassroots organization, you know, grassroots efforts to put more ducks in the air and on the water, right? And that's kind of the way I look at it. And I've always done that. And I I've probably ticked some people off at Virginia DU enrichment over the years, and particularly, you know, whatever it may be. But, you know, I want my money to stay home to serve and produce ducks here. And I don't know that, and and for your listeners, I don't know that there is a better, more grassroots way to be part of the annual duck cycle than researching, experimenting, and kind of getting into wood duck boxes because it is awesome. Like, and you've you've seen it when we pulled the shells out, you've seen your kids take a look at the membranes and be able to go, oh wow, you know, like and all this stuff that goes with it. There's so much goodness involved with the experience. You know, and I've told you over the years, we've had big groups of kids come out and we, you know, we haul them out in the muck and we put them on a ladder, they climb up there, and you watch their head explode when they reach into a box and they pull something out. So it's awesome. It's is it's so awesome. So yeah, that's how I feel about it.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

Well, no, I I appreciate that, Matt. And you know, we're getting close on time and and like I do with absolutely because I do what I told you, I told you I was gonna run late and you had to shut me off.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

No, so no, this is perfect, Matt. I I appreciate it, man. And I know we could do a couple of these just on wood ducks.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah, well, hey Sean, if I could, yeah, if you could share my email address with your listener group. And if there's anyone who is interested in learning more or might want box plans or even just wants to talk wood duck boxes, please share it because I've always got time.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Yeah, certainly. And I'll I'll put that contact information in in the show notes, Matt. Perfect. But and as always, there's always the things that I I've seen and read that I like I like to share. And you're welcome to add to it as well, Matt. But in addition to you know, the habitat work like nesting boxes and and cleaning up gear to put away this time of year, there's also a bunch of decoy collector shows and carver shows and events that are going on. I know Long Island Decoy Collectors, which is one, a fantastic social media handle to follow just for the history. But they had a show, I think, last week. There's one in Back Bay, Virginia coming up in another couple weeks. Okay. And then Luke Costello, decoy carver, a previous guest Christmas episode. He shared there's one going on in Ohio in the coming weeks as well, which which I'll all should share out. And then there's always events going on at inhabited grace, uh, you know, a place synonymous with decoy carving.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Sure, sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

And then the guys over at Standard Sportsman Podcasts have had some great episodes lately since the holidays, since season ended, you know, talking about habitat management. But they also had one with friend and photographer Lee Jose, that I highly recommend as a great listen. And he talked about a lot of his trips over the years since he started back. And Lee, if you're listening, don't know exactly you're back in the 70s. But his trips up to Canada, freelancing and hunting, and just how much that landscape has changed, you know, firsthand accounts. And we're interested to see. Sounds like maybe you got something to work there, Lee, uh, photography-wise, and be interested to see how that that comes about. And then a little bit closer to home, and this one's more of home where I am now, but but home home. There was a fantastic article by, and I'm going to butcher Phil's last name, Phil Bourget, in the latest issue of Ducks Unlimited that highlighted a late season goose trip he took to Oregon, my old stopping grounds in the Wyoming Valley, in pursuit of true cackling geese. Features two previous podcast guests as well and friends, DU biologist Kelly Warren, and photography by Mike Callion as well. Some great images, of course, by Mike. And that's just a great read for anybody that wants to know a little bit more about cackling geese and and the West Coast. But Matt, anything you'd like to share for final notes?

SPEAKER_01 52:19

No, I think we covered him. You don't need to encourage me to talk more. So no, I think we've got a pretty good fill. I think it's fantastic. I would encourage everyone to give it a try. And you know, if you want some help and save you some trouble, like please reach out and I'll be more than willing to share kind of how to do it and my experiences and to save you a lot of heartache.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Cool. Well, I really appreciate it, Matt. Hopefully I see you. I'll try and make this weekend something work as well. But yeah, thanks for everything you do for wood ducks and ducks and for all that. But yeah, hopefully be interested to see what the numbers look like after this work.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Well, Sean, I will share them with you when I've got them. And I I appreciate the invitation, the opportunity to to talk about what we do and how we do it. So thank you very much. Thank you.