Q: We had a pair of wood ducks on our pond, but now I only see the male. Does this imply that the female is on the nest?
A: It's possible. Female wood ducks nest inside cavities, either in trees or nest boxes and she may have been inside setting up her nest at the time you sent in this question. Once she and the male mate, however, he moves out of the area while she proceeds to lay an egg a day until her brood of up to 12 eggs is complete. The female incubates the eggs inside the cavity for about 30 days, then the ducklings hatch out. About a day later they jump out of the tree or box and follow their mother wherever she leads.
Feeder pigs
Q: Grackles dominate my sunflower feeders until around July 4th, at which point they disappear for the rest of the summer. Why do they behave this way?
A: If it's any consolation, other readers face the same problem with greedy grackles in early summer. It sounds as if a pair of grackles was raising a family nearby and found your feeders to be a convenient way to feed themselves.
In early July their youngsters left the nest and the family moved off to the countryside to gather with other blackbirds. They feed in large flocks and the juveniles learn necessary survival skills, then all will head out in early autumn to head south. Some folks swear that grackles don't like safflower seed as much as sunflower seed, so you might try filling your feeders with safflower next spring.
Seedy robins?
Q: I've noticed robins landing on my deck and eating sunflower seeds under my feeder. Is this rare or common?
A: I've seen robins feeding on the ground under my bird feeders from time to time, and always assumed that they were picking up bits of dropped suet and small insects among the seed shells. Until recently it was thought that robins would not eat feeder seeds, but people increasingly are reporting it happening in their backyards. Black oiler sunflower seeds have a fairly soft shell, making them easy for robins to open and extract the high-energy nutmeat inside. Over the long term, however, robins need to add in the proteins found in worms and other insects.
Woodpecker tale
Q: After I read your recent piece on pileated woodpeckers, I wanted to tell you about what one of these birds accomplished in my yard: After a storm blew down an ash tree I cut the trunk down to about a foot above the ground. Pretty soon it looked as if a small bomb had gone off in the stump, with big holes in the wood and around it in the lawn. The pileated came every day to chip into the trunk and gulp down big white grubs he found inside. In about 10 days the stump was completely gone and there was a hole a foot deep in the yard. This was a favor to me, because all I had to do was rake up the wood chips, toss in some dirt and plant grass seed.
