I'm sure duck experts can help me? Sadly the wood ducks didn't decide to hang around but I do have a nesting mallard pair. Well, not a pair, a three some??
2 questions.
1. Every day 2 males paddle around the pond and hang out waiting for the lady to arrive. Presumably she is nearby in the woods sitting on a nest. Is it common to have 2 fathers in the duck world? They both seem equally dedicated to the task at hand. One of them likes to stand on top of the wood duck hut which from a distance always gets my hopes up that a Wood Duck may be settling in only to zoom in with my zoom camera lens from the house and see the green head...
2. Lately the female and male are hanging out during the day time hours too. Does that means the eggs failed and mom some how knows that? Maybe racoons cleaned out the nest?
I'm giving up on Woodies so I may install one of those mallard nesting tubes over the water next spring so the animals can't raid the nest every year. The last 3-4 years the mallards did their nesting thing but we never saw a baby mallard yet.
