West Virginia Wildlife from Eyewitness News

Wood Duck Boxes

Local boyscouts think inside the box.

April 9, 2008
Reporter: Patrick McMurtry
Videographer: Brad Rice

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Spring is here and that means a lot of the migratory birds will be coming back to west virginia. That also means they'll be looking for homes. One group of boy scouts are prepared to help out.

John Thompson/Scout Master says:
"One part of scouting is the outdoors and we do a lot of camping and do a lot of things in the outdoors. One of the things I wanted to teach the boys is taking care of nature and being a part of nature. We got in touch with some biologists and basically asked them what we could do to help out down there."

John Thompson/Scout Master says:
"Wood ducks like to nest in hollow trees and hollow trees are at a premium, so by adding nest for them, we give them a place to be able to raise their young and lay their eggs. We got the boys involved with that, so they can learn about nature and the ducks and help out the state of West Virginia and wood ducks in general."

This is a labor of love for scout troop 250. They've been doing it for years, and they montior their work to make sure the ducks are safe, sound and clean.

Charlie Dodrill/Troop 250 says:
"We're hanging up the boxes, we were hanging them up in McClintock, we hang them up every year and replace the wood chips and we put them up there so they don't have to take time to build a nest."

A couple of screws, and this box is up. Within weeks it will be home to a happy wood duck and a passle of ducklings. For west virginia wildlife, i'm patrick mcmurtry, eyewitness news.

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