Wood duck houses-use a post and predator guard!!

[BLACKJACK]

Now is the time to be putting up wood duck houses and I'd like to encourage people to mount them on separate posts with predator guards instead of in trees. Four reasons to do this:

1) Easy maintenance, you don't have to lug around a ladder every year when you refresh the wood chips.

2) Easy access for monitoring, you can check the house every day if its close, you can see if more than one hen is laying, kids love it!

3) Longer lasting houses. In 1998 I put up 1/2 dozen houses in live trees. By last fall when I took them all down, most of them were ready to fall down because the tree had grown. We've all seen wood duck houses barely hanging onto trees along a lake shore, useless to ducks. Putting them on a treated pole, that house should still be there in 20 years.

4) Better predator control. There is NOTHING to stop a squirrel or raccoon from terrorizing a house hung in a tree. In the last two years, I found a coon that had enlarged one of the entry holes and was actually living in the house. On another house, I found where the coon had opened the latch and sucked all the eggs. That was the last straw and what made me pull all my duck houses out of the trees. I've never had a predator get into one of my wood duck houses on a pole with a proper predator guard.

People think its too costly to mount them on a pole with a predator guard but you already have $15-20 invested in cedar lumber, why not make it last? For $4 you can buy treated landscape timber for a post. You can get the predator guards at a heating contractor or I make my own out of inverted 15 gallon barrels that can be picked up for free from anyplace that uses a lot of soap - dairy farmers, hospitals, and restaurants come to mind.

Protect your investment and help the wood ducks actually hatch; mount your wood duck houses on a post with a predator guard. The second year when you're not lugging that ladder around, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner!

[BLACKJACK]

Thought I'd bump this one back to the top, people are going to be out putting out wood duck houses the next few weekends.

I'd like to re-emphasize that if you live by a pond and put out a house on a pole, its fun to go by and check it every day, you can see how many eggs accumulate every day, and you can watch for the young duckies on hatch day. And the absolute best part about the pole mounted is that coons can't bother them. I was looking over some of the houses that I took down out of oak trees last fall and every one of them has bite marks around the hole.

[Mark Christianson]

The bite marks around the hole are most likely squirrels.

But you are correct, its much better to get em over the water on a pole. My new houses in the future will be all pole mounted.

[ChuckN]

Great advice BLACKJACK.

I stopped mounting houses on trees unless they were all alone over water and I wrapped the 2-3' of aluminum flashing around the tree.

Believe it or not, coons will swim in the water and try to get into mallard tubes and wood duck houses. If you use a post in the water, wrap flashing around the post (a good 24" below the house) will help keep the predator's claws from climbing up.

All my houses were completed before ice out. That's the easy way and before the ducks arrive. I can't wait to see the ducklings!!

[BLACKJACK]

The bite marks could have been squirrels but when they're an inch aways from the hole... I actually found one small coon in a wood duck house, it had enlarged it enough to crawl in. He sleeps with the fishes now.

The duck/mallard tubes I put out in the water but for the pole mounted wood duck houses, I put them along the edges of ponds and in clearings up in the woods. Think about it, wood ducks are looking for holes up in a tree to nest in, they'll lead their duckies a long way to water, putting the pole mounted houses in clearings is the way to go, thats where I've had my highest occupancy.

By the way, I see Menards has the treated landscape timbers on sale - $2.44 each. The cost of buying your own pole shouldn't stop you.