6:22pm on Friday night (IA time) and the nest is empty. Momma must be hungry. Really awesome to see this and watch it. I also am reminded (from my trips to IA so many times) how windy it is by you. You hear wind noise all the time. We are fortunate in W MI to have lots of trees and much less wind.

My boxes are facing East as winds almost always from the west. They both look at the pond, one is tipped SE. One is on a pole on the edge of the pond and perhaps a little more in the visible/traffic area, less trees around it. The other is up in a tree about 15' up and I have wrapped the tree for about 30" below the box with stovepipe as a predator guard. We only saw one pair of wood ducks briefly for one day and they were gone.

Further into the woods to the west there is lots of dead and live standing trees with lots of dead fall, leaves, Oaks, acorns etc. Lots of natural holes from Flickers and Pileated woodpeckers. I'll probably move the one on the pole back further in the woods and see what happens. I'll keep in mind the advice to see what the line of flight is from the pond.

Good to see you post Bryan, we all would love to hear more about how your pond caters to the waterfowl. You must have a generous boss to be giving out stainless steel 3" pipe in 20' sections, if you had to buy those would they be like $100 a stick? Glad to see you put them to good use!