Nesting — Feathered friends get 'extreme home makeover'

FARMINGTON BAY BIRD REFUGE — In a single day, roughly 100 volunteers remodeled about 150 existing homes and built another 50 new homes — for ducks and geese.

Within the next month, most should be occupied and, shortly thereafter, become home to whole families ... away from skunks and raccoons and foxes, something their less-fortunate neighbors are forced to contend with.

The restoration/home building project was a joint effort by the Utah Airboat Association and the Utah and Delta Waterfowl associations.

It involved refurbishing roughly 100 "nesting boxes" for ducks and about 50 nesting platforms for geese. The groups also built another 50 new nests for ducks.

Both ducks and geese face a number of challenges on Utah's marshlands. The spread of "phragmites," a dense ornamental plant that is

non-native to Utah, is limiting nesting opportunities.

Both ducks and geese are being forced to nest along dikes, which are a predator's corridor.

"Which is why this project is so important," said Richard Hansen, manager of the Farmington Bay marshes for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "We don't want the ducks and geese nesting on the dikes. They have no protection at all from predators."

Predator numbers are increasing, especially the raccoon population. As a result, Utah's holdover waterfowl population is being heavily preyed upon.

Many people are under the impression that all waterfowl move north into Canada and the northern reaches of the United States to nest. Most birds do fly north in the spring and south in the fall, but a large number of ducks and geese opt to stay in Utah year-round.

Last year, the Utah and Delta waterfowl groups put out about 100 duck nests. These nests resemble large, round plastic scoops perched on long pipes. Boy Scouts working for their Eagle award built another 50 long, circular nests of wire and straw that were placed out in the marshes and will be closely monitored this year.

Carl Taylor, a member of the Utah Waterfowl Association, explained that unlike other birds, ducks will not take building materials to a nesting site, but simply use what's available.

"So we came to refurbish the nests and stuff them with new straw to help the hens with that part of the nesting process," he said.