Bird's-Eye View - Native Fowl: Wood ducks prefer warmer climates for breeding, raising their young

With the arrival of autumn, there are more changes afoot than just the turning of the leaves. Songbirds and hawks wing their way south in September, and the first few days of cooler temperatures see small flocks of blue-winged teal setting down on ponds and lakes in the Triad. As fall turns to winter and northern waters begin to freeze, more and more waterfowl will come our way, many of them to spend the winter here as long as the water stays open.

But one of our favorite ducks isn't so seasonal. While most waterfowl spend their summers rearing their young much farther north -- some as far as the Arctic Circle -- wood ducks prefer to remain a little more southerly, breeding across the eastern U.S. The wood duck is a year-round resident from the mountains to the coast throughout the Southeast.

Wood ducks nest in tree cavities, including old pileated woodpecker nests. They do not nest on the ground like most waterfowl. These cavities are usually 20 feet off the ground, and sometimes as much as 40 feet. The advantage of such inaccessible nest sites is that they are much harder for predators to get to. But they aren't completely safe. Raccoons, rat snakes (which climb very well), and even woodpeckers prey on the eggs.

But what happens when the eggs do succeed in hatching? How do the chicks, unable to fly for several weeks, get safely to the ground? Well, they just have to be careful with that first step. It's a doozy.

All the eggs -- usually 10 to 12 of them -- hatch about the same time, and all the ducklings leave the nest, with a little coaxing from their mother, about 24 hours after hatching. The mother flies to the ground and clucks to the ducklings who leap out of the nest and drift gently to the ground. Wood duck hatchlings have been known to leap nearly 300 feet to the ground without harm. All the down covering their little bodies catches the air and they float to the earth as if they had parachutes.

Once they leave the nest, mama duck shepherds the young to water, where they soon learn what to eat, mainly by following the mother's example. When fully grown, wood ducks eat a wide variety of animals, mostly aquatic invertebrates, and plant material.

A favorite food in fall is acorns. But they don't have chisel-like bills, like woodpeckers, so they can't hammer them apart. They don't have teeth, so they can't gnaw through acorns like squirrels. Their bills are too soft and round-edged, so they swallow them whole. Imagine swallowing half a dozen whole acorns.

The best place to see wood ducks is the Bethabara wetland at Reynolda Road and Yadkinville Road. The boardwalks on either side of the wetland are great places to look for wood ducks, as well as herons, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds and others. Other parks where they can be found are Tanglewood's swamp along the road to the BMX course, Winston Lake and Salem Lake. A bit farther away, the flooded fields at Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge in Anson and Richmond counties are great places to see large numbers of wood ducks in winter. In May, hens with their broods of ducklings may be seen along the New River in Ashe County.

■ The Audubon Society of Forsyth County will have its monthly meeting in the Visitor Center at Historic Bethabara Park at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27. The guest speaker will be Ollie Treadway of Carolina Nature Photographers. He will speak on photographing birds in flight. The center is at 2147 Bethabara Road.

■ Bird's-Eye View is a joint column by Ron Morris and Phil Dickinson. Today's column was written by Morris. Morris retired after 24 years as curator at the N.C. Zoo. He has studied birds around the world and is currently the vice president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County. Dickinson is a legal writer. He has been an active birder for 15 years, and is a past president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County and chairs the conservation committee. If you have a birding question or story idea, write to Bird's-Eye View in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101-3159, or send an e-mail to birding@wsjournal.com. Please type "birds" in the subject line.