One of the wood duck houses placed on the Bark River located in Waukesha County by volunteers of our Waukesha County Chapter.
In Wisconsin, there are two primary types of nesting structures in use, to help improve the odds of brood rearing & survival, in places where natural habitat may be deficient, or non-existent: “nesting tubes”, primarily for mallards, and “wood duck boxes”, which describe a variety of structures which provide an artificial habitat for cavity nesting ducks like woodies, buffleheads, mergansers and goldeneyes, as well as other birds.
- One great resource for a broad overview on the life-cycle of the wood duck can be found here, in the website of the Wood Duck Society.
- WWA has an informational resource regarding wood duck nesting box placement, installation and maintenance. For all of your questions, please check out our Wood Duck Nesting Box FAQs.
- Another interesting source to consider, from the state of Washington: Washington State DFW Wood Duck Info.
Our association has a long history of building, providing, placing & maintaining wood duck houses on a variety of public and private venues since our founding in 1984.
Although this work has taken many forms over the years, our current programs include these:
WWA is a long-time sponsor of the Wisconsin Outdoor New’s Wood Duck House Challenge. This program encourages and rewards 
youth for building and placing new wood duck nesting structures. WWA provides a complementary Youth Membership to every participant, age 17 and younger…
WWA volunteer teams, lead by Waukesha Chapter chair, Mike Alaimo, have installed, and maintain a large number of wood duck houses on WDNR properties in Waukesha and Jefferson Counties, some, as a part of our Adopt A Wildlife Area works in those wildlife areas. Our Appleton/Valley Chapter has completed several nesting projects in greater Outagamie County as well.
WWA offers completed wood duck houses, and wooden house building kits, for sale. We currently use a simplified design, which features a swing-side, instead of a door, for clean out purposes, eliminating the need for expensive hardware for assembly. The kits can be assembled using only a couple dozen weather-resistant style construction screws.
Now available for sale/shipping on our website for $45 each built house and $35 each kit plus $5 flat rate shipping per order! WWA seeks to provide nesting structures to end-users who will carefully place and maintain them into the future, so they might be successful on the landscape. To that end, we offer these items at a very low rate, which offers cost-recovery for their production. Get yours here.
Thank you to our wood duck box program sponsor Ponsse. 
3 kits shown
WWA has partnered with many organizations, on a wide variety of project proposals regarding wood duck nesting structures. Feel free to reach out to us, regarding yours. For more info, check out our Wood Duck House Manual.
And here is a resource for predator guards (note: WWA has no relationship with this vendor or knowledge of the product quality): https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/pages/MWDI/predator_guards.aspx
The association would not be able to provide these nesting structures without the efforts of these volunteers:
Erich Pitz, Wetland Life Member, Lakeshore Chapter lead our production efforts for structures for several years prior to his passing in October 2020. Using the resources of his company, McMullen & Pitz, Erich sourced all of our wood, moved our raw materials and finished goods, to and from partners at the Blackwell Job Corps Center in Laona, on his heavy equipment trailers, stored our overstock finished materials in his warehouses, and lead our grass-roots fundraising efforts to support this program. Thanks to Erich for all of his efforts!
2014 “batch” ready to roll
2017 raw materials, 5000 board ft., delivered
Rob Monette, Life Member, & the Marshland Chapter, Regional Director: Rob and his band of avid workers have also been an important source of locally produced wood duck structures, and a second distribution point for structures built elsewhere, as well. The Marshland chapter operates in the Beaver Dam area, and this team also leads the annual State Duck & Goose Calling Championships effort.
2016 houses from the Marshland/West Allis teams.
Want to see the results from a good wood duck nesting box? Check out this video, provided by WWA board president, Bruce Urben. It shows the last few ducklings making the jump down to join their siblings and momma duck, near a pond on his property in Oconto County, WI. Watch the grass area below the box closely, to see all the ducks moving towards the water!