Amateurs at Play

Citizen science has become one way to collect scientific data because it costs very little.  Every single thing in this world is about money.  EVERYTHING.  I will write a post on that perhaps soon.

Anyway, I was a citizen scientist yesterday.  What I gave was my time and energy and bravery against the ticks.  What I got was being outdoors on a perfect day, being able to take photographs, seeing a really beautiful nature trail and being with good company, human and animal.
 

 

It is spring and time to monitor those wood duck boxes that we fixed and/or installed last fall.  Data showed that of the 19 boxes, some were empty, some had hatched eggs, some had fatalities, some were never used and some had newly laid eggs.  Some of the boxes were in the early stages of their use with only 4 eggs laid and buried deep down in the wood chips with no down yet pulled from momma duck.  Others had as many as 15 viable eggs waiting to hatch and sitting deep in down.  One box was a tragedy, we think momma met with a danger and died as three little hatch-lings had pushed from their eggs and died in the box and the other eleven eggs never hatched.

The good news is that over 50 eggs were still waiting in the various boxes and about 30 had hatched and were on their way!

And we were very lucky to see Momma wood duck and 11 little ones out for one of their first swims.