THE SERVICE PROJECT

Project Summary

My Eagle Scout service project was to organize a group of volunteers to build 12 wood duck nesting boxes. Then, a team of volunteers installed 7 of these boxes at public parks on the Colorado Front Range, and 5 of them on privately owned land in Weld County.

The project was conducted in partnership with Ducks Unlimited, who advised me on construction of the boxes and assisted me in selection of the nesting sites.

Click here to learn more about Ducks Unlimited.

Project Video

Thank you to Brandon Fien for this video!

Why did I pick this project?

I have selected this project because I am passionate about Colorado's outdoors and its wildlife resources. Since as early as I can remember, I have been spending time in the outdoors, mostly with my Dad and my brother, in pursuit of enjoying all that all that Mother Nature has to offer, especially her wildlife. I am a fly fisherman and a hunter. Click here to learn more about me.

I learned about Ducks Unlimited and its conservation efforts when I was earning my Colorado Hunter’s Education certification in the early 2023.

A year later, I reached out to Colin Mulligan, the Host of Ducks Unlimited TV, to ask him about ways I could contribute to Ducks Unlimited efforts in conservation and habitat preservation. Colin is a really interesting person, a passionate outdoorsman who travels the world filming duck hunts for Ducks Unlimited TV. Colin is committed to helping get youth get excited about wildlife. Colin also serves on the National Youth and Education Committee of Ducks Unlimited. He told me about the need for Wood Duck nesting boxes, and the possibilities for bolstering Wood Duck populations in Colorado through this service project.

Among Colorado’s waterfowl, in my mind wood ducks are without question the most beautiful and interesting species. I am proud of this project’s contribution to one of Colorado’s spectacular wild resources.

PHASE 1: NESTING BOX CONSTRUCTION

Construction of Boxes

Fourteen volunteers met on the basketball court at St. John’s Church in Washington Park on a Saturday morning in September 2024 to build the boxes from cuts of white pine lumber and other raw materials. By the end of the day, we had 12 fully assembled nesting boxes ready to install.

Volunteers were organized into ten different workstations, each with a specialized task, based (very loosely) on the assembly line construction processes of former Ducks Unlimited member Henry Ford. For anyone interested in the details, a detailed plan of the process and workflow map can be found here.

Some photos from the assembly day are below.

PHASE II: INSTALLATION OF NESTING BOXES

SUMMARY OF SITES

I had two general types of locations for sites:

1. PRIVATE LAND - 5 Boxes - Sites 1-5. Five boxes were installed on private farmland in Weld County, Colorado. These were on sites recommended to me by my contacts at Ducks Unlimited, and I am really excited about them because these guys have actually seen Wood Ducks at these locations. I am going to revisit all of them in the Spring of 2025 to see if we have any inhabitants of these boxes, and to hopefully get some good photographs.

II. PUBLIC LAND - 7 Boxes - Sites 6-12. One of the things that makes Colorado’s Front Range special are our abundant and accessible public lands, much of which has fresh water for use by waterfowl. I wanted to involve our special public land resources in this project. Included on or near our nesting boxes are scannable QR codes which can direct anyone who is interested to this website. If you are on this website, you may have found this site by scanning a QR code on one of our nesting boxes, or near one of the nesting boxes. Picking these sites on public land involved a delicate balance. We needed sites which had potential for Wood Duck nesting and which could also give park visitors and understanding of what we were trying to achieve with this project.

In addition to the great people at Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Denver City Parks & Recreation, I used a really handy tool called ebird which is online database of bird observations providing scientists, researchers and amateur naturalists with real-time data about bird distribution. Ebird can give you real-time data about sightings of Wood Ducks, and I picked sights where there have been regular Wood Duck activity observed.

PHOTOS OF SITES 1-5: PRIVATE FARMLAND IN WELD COUNTY, COLORADO

Five nesting boxes were installed next to rivers and ponds on private land in Weld County, with the help of Ducks Unlimited. I have not shared a map of these locations out of respect for the privacy of the landowners, but below are some photos of the boxes as installed.

SITE 1: SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, NEAR KERSEY, COLORADO. (The yellow lab is a sweet girl named Honey, and she was a big help)

SITES 2 & 3: POND CLOSE TO SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, NEAR KERSEY, COLORADO.

SITE 4: CACHE LA POUDRE RIVER, NEAR PLATTEVILLE, COLORADO.

SITE 5: BETWEEN TWO PONDS NEAR PLATTEVILLE, COLORADO.

PHOTOS OF SITES 6-8: DENVER CITY PARK

Three nesting boxes were installed in the CIty of Denver. THANK YOU to Conor and Liam from Denver Parks & Recreation for taking time out of their Saturdays to assist with these installations. Each of these nesting boxes were in a location relatively tucked away, but also visible enough by foot traffic to be scanned, so it had a QR Code installed directly on the back. My hope is that any visitor curious about the purpose of the boxes will scan the code, and have opportunity to learn about Wood Ducks and conservation efforts.

SITE 6: LILY PONDS, WASHIGNTON PARK, DENVER

SITE 7: BERKLEY PARK, DENVER

SITE 8: PARKFIELD LAKE PARK, DENVER

PHOTOS OF SITES 9-12: CHERRY CREEK STATE PARK

Cherry Creek State Park is a 4,000 acre wild and scenic oasis surrounded by suburban communities near Denver, Colorado. More importantly for me, it has acres of wetlands and is a known nesting site for Wood Ducks.

Four nesting boxes were installed in the Cherry Creek State Park.

At these four sites, we had two separate groupings of nesting boxes (with two boxes in each grouping), one grouping of two boxes on a seasonal pond (full of water in the spring) near the Beaver Pond Nature Trail, and the other grouping of two boxes in wetlands near the Wetlands Bird View Point. At each of these grouping locations, a sign with the QR Code and link to this website was installed on a metal post near a park bench viewing area.

THANK YOU MIchelle Seubert, Park Manager, for taking time out of her busy schedule to help with planning of these installations.

SITES 9 and 10: CHERRY CREEK STATE PARK, BEAVER POND NATURE TRAIL