laxbro, can you give some advice on how I could use existing trees to mount rather than sinking poles in my pond? I see them mostly mounted on steel poles in the pond but we like to skate on the pond. I have a lot of trees right next to the pond. So how far into the tree line (back from the water edge and into the cover of trees?) do we mount the boxes? How high off the ground?

Then the challenge would be to protect from predators since they could easily climb the tree from under the duck box or perhaps even from above the box? How do you best protect a tree mounted box?