Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:15:28 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Kerry Stone Organization: American Geophysical Union Subject: Questions about Wood ducks MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sorry if you've rec'd this already. I'm not sure it went through since it was my first post. Plus, I forgot to add my email address. Thanks. ks Hi there: I've been learning so much from the posts on this site. I'm grateful there is this bunch of passionate naturalists at my fingertips. I have a couple of questions about wood ducks. I've been lucky enough to spot and watch 2-3 pairs of Wood ducks near my house on Sligo Creek in Montgomery County. The creek is about an eighth of mile from my house. This morning as I was checking out my feeders, I saw a male female wood duck up in a tree in my neighbor's backyard. Like me, my neighbor is about an eight of a mile from the creek. I was surprised to see the ducks so far from the creek or is this normal (and really not so far). I guess from seeing all the manmade wood duck boxes built right near, if not right in, the water, I assumed they liked it closer to the water source. Bottom line: Will they nest that far from water? Secondly, all week I've been seeing a male hanging out with 2 females? I thought that was kind of odd, especially this close to an egg date. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance for any input or knowledge on the wood ducks. As an aside, I think unlike most people, that the female is more beautiful than the male in way. She seems subtly, naturally beautiful. Whereas the male seems to be wearing too much make-up. Anthromorphising (sp?), I know. Regards, Kerry Stone Takoma Park, Maryland kstone@agu.org ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================