Hunting Creek Swamp

We've been down to Hunting Creek Swamp to maintain our wood duck boxes. We clean out all the old nesting material from last year, check for the presence of successful nesting, and insert new nesting material (we use cedar shavings). More information can be found on this species by clicking on wood ducks.

We have boxes on open water, boxes bordering the edge of the water, and boxes along Hunting Creek itself. Here Shane gives Mike a ride thru the thick trees that have encroached on some of our border boxes while Jim trims some of the trees and limbs back to discourage use by squirrels and raccoons.


We checked the boxes after a weekend of heavy rain. Consulting websites, we could see that Hunting Creek had a huge influx of water just prior to when we were down there. Once there, we could see for ourselves just how high the water had gotten. The ground was covered with a layer of fresh mud, and as you can see in this picture, the water had gotten up amazingly high.

Notice the "high water" mark on these trees. You can see a thin brown line on the tree in the foreground. I went and stood beside this mark and it measured to about 5 feet! The water had definately gotten WAY UP!