Wood Duck Box Inspection at Smith Mountain Lake State Park

On December 3rd a crack team of wood duck box specialists from the BRFAL Chapter of the Virginia Master Naturalists was dispatched to the beautiful Smith Mountain Lake State Park with the mission of inspecting as many wood duck boxes as possible for any signs of wood duck residency (or any other critters), effect any minor repairs to the boxes and reconfirm GPS locations of the boxes.


The team was comprised of Dick LeRoy, Dick Hendrix, Rick Watson, Jim Pilversack, Glenn Sieman, Carl Boast and his wife Linda and your faithful author, Rich Brager. When we arrived at the park we were met by several Park employees including Dave Gunnells, Cliff Goodwin and Jet Lawler. We broke into 3 teams, each team with certain of the 12 wood duck boxes we hoped to visit.

Well how did we do? We dun good. With the exception of one wood duck box and post that was completely missing, we managed to find and inspect 11 of the 12 boxes. Some minor repairs were done, some major repairs will be required in the future. All GPS locations were verified.

The worst part of our mission was that no sign of wood ducks could be verified. The best part of the visit was making new friends at the State Park. As a matter of fact, some State Park folks will be visiting us during our January BRFAL meeting to discuss some exciting opportunities for our members in the future.

Here are a few pix from our day:

This isn't Jim waving.  This is box #4 with broken bottom latch.

 Whoops, box 9 with only back of box remaining.

Guess which box number this is.

Aha! Signs of a freeloader in box 8, probably a screech owl.





Box 12 in need of repair.