Tammy Wolfe has been sending me great updates about her wood duck and blue bird boxes. She even managed to get a great photo of a hooded merganser chick popping out of the box (I am pea green with envy):

"Banzai!"

She also had quite the adventure this morning trying to get more photos of young chicks coming out of a wood duck box. It made me chuckle because who of us out there haven't had the exact same thing happen to us?

This morning I got up at 5:30 am to check to see if the hooded mergansers were still in the duck box. I waded through the chest-high murky water to the box, set up the ladder, clicked the button to take a photo, and then realized that I had forgotten to put a memory card in my digital camera and had to head back to the house. When I got back to the box, I was pleasantly surprised that the babies were still in it. So, I headed back to the house for my tripod, camera and zoom lens. As I was getting set up, the female returned. I tried to hide in the tall grass and brush, but decided to go back to the house again to get my blind. After setting it up, I had to wait about 20 minutes. There was a wood duck family in the area and then some squabbling geese. Once they left, she began to call them. When we put up this box three years ago, we didn't base it on where the best photo op would be. Therefore, my memories are better than my photos. It was a pleasure to watch 10 babies jump out of the box on a beautiful, sunny morning around 7 am.