Sunil,
We posted the sign
near my duck feeder and one of the wood duck nesting boxes that I installed to create a little "habitat" for people to see. My sheet metal guy will come back soon to roof the duck feeder like he did for my
floating swan feeder. The language went through a few revisions, as we were not sure how to get the messages that we wanted across. What we were dealing with was:
1. The vast majority of the people who pass by the lake think that it is public property. For some reason unknown to me, many of them seem to treat it differently because of that perception - leaving trash, coming by at night and leaving evidence of the previous night's "session" if you know what I mean - stuff like that. So we primarily wanted something to indicate that it was private. Previously before I bought my portion of the pond, there were your standard "NO TRESSPASSING" and "NO FISHING" signs, but I didn't like the garish look of those, so I wanted something a little more pleasing to the eye.
2. I wanted to add something about the fish, because one of my new (well-intentioned) neighbors mentioned to me after we had dredged the lake and stocked it with the BG, something to the effect of "Oh it is so nice now - the next time we go fishing I can release all my catch here in the pond!", which I didn't want. I found out that in the past, this is how alot of the fish we had in the lake got there - city residents who were fisher(wo)men would bring catch to the pond.
I ran the copy by a couple of people to get the initial "gut reaction" of what emotions would be triggered when a visitor read the sign, b/c I wanted to nicely inform and at the same time let people know that alot of work goes into keeping it clean, etc. Good to get feedback from another, thanks. I would be happy to entertain critique via email that you think would give a better impression.
Otherwise...
I know that losing the chicks is a part of nature's wonder. AND, we probably already have about as many duck as we should for a pond our size. Maybe I will look into incubating the eggs and then releasing them into other areas so that they have a better chance. This is all new to me, but it has become a new hobby, made infinitely easier by the pros here at pondboss.
