It's a full nest!

The nest is full.

I was able to check out the eggs a little more closely this morning and to my surprise, I found 21 eggs!  A wood duck normally lays around a dozen.
According to the Wood Duck Society, my new 'go to' reference, it is quite common for more than one hen to lay eggs in the same nest.  This is called a "dump nest" or a "compound nest".
I have seen at least one other pair of wood ducks in our pond - so I guess that's possible.  Why? Anyone's guess.  Maybe the second duck just wasn't up to the challenge of a dozen babies.  Understandable...

Wood duck eggs hatch in approximately 30 days from when the last one was laid.  I have zero idea of when that was.  My best guess is going to come from candling an egg.  Candling means to take an egg into a dark room and shine a flashlight behind it.  In this manner, you can see right into the developing egg and gauge it's progress.  We did this a few years ago when we raised the orphaned mallards. When we raised the mallards, we had an incubator - so it wasn't crucial to know the hatch date.  We just watched for it to happen.  With the wood ducks, if we don't have a guess, we will miss it. According to the Wood Duck Society, the eggs will begin to hatch one day, and the next day they will all leave the nest between 7:00 and 9:00 am.  That is a really small window of opportunity. If we can guess the progress, we MIGHT know when to start watching for hatching.

There is a lot of good information online about gauging the progress of chickens via candling and very little about ducks.  Chickens hatch in 3 weeks, ducks in four - so you can't really use that information.  I found one and only one chart online - but I have to make a big guess using it.  I think my best bet will be to try to candle another egg in about a week to make a comparison.  Skyler doesn't love it when I peek in on her (she hisses at me) and I've yet to catch her out of the box for dinner.  That means I've had to chase her out by opening the side door.  I admit, I feel kind of bad about that - so that is why I'm going to wait another week.  Give the lady some peace at home.

In the meantime, enjoy these pictures and be sure to check back!

Single wood duck egg, slightly
smaller than a chicken egg.

I took the top three eggs off so we could see
how neatly stacked all the eggs are.  Each can
be kept toasty warm by mama duck!

All 21 eggs. 

Candling the wood duck egg. No guesses yet on age. 

Isn't it beautiful?