Photo by Brad DyeDavid White and John Aldridge are all smiles after the successful installation of box number one at David’s lake. If all goes according to plan, David will be enjoying the “wood duck symphony” this time next year.

One of the greatest simple pleasures that I have enjoyed daily since moving to the farm has been the symphony of wood duck sounds coming from the lake. My ears are filled with the melodious sounds of their calls each morning while loading my car for the day and each evening while feeding the goats or, if time allows, sitting outside on the front lawn with G and the dogs.

The woodies have been our neighbors at the farm since we installed wood duck boxes at the lake many years ago. They began nesting the next year and have done so each year thereafter.

I have been fortunate enough on two occasions to watch the baby ducklings drop from their nest for the first time to the water below, and it is one of the most beautiful things that I have seen in nature.

Watching and listening to the woodies each day has also been a great reminder to me of the concept of paying it forward—repaying kindness with kindness. In the case of the wood duck boxes, I have tried to pay it forward to both the ducks and the friend that built our boxes by helping others get boxes of their own.

Most recently, I helped our friend Penny Kemp who wanted boxes near her newly built home on her family’s lake in Noxapater. Earlier this year, I did the same for Meridian friends David White and John Aldridge.

Penny and her father Jimmy installed three boxes in November of 2021, and when I opened her recent text to see the picture of a brood of ducklings swimming with their mother on the lake, I couldn’t help but smile.

It didn’t take Penny long to see success with her boxes, which she attributes to location selection and the fact that Jimmy previously had boxes on a different part of the lake for many years.

The Kemp wood ducks nested in the box nearest Penny’s home last spring, raising one small brood. This year she says that all three boxes are active and have, thus far, produced one brood of ten ducklings with activity that leads her to believe another is soon to come.

David, John and I installed two boxes at David’s lake near Meridian late one evening in February with the hope that we would be in time for nesting this year. After a little blood, sweat, and beers, we ended the day sitting next to the lake in the quiet solitude marveling at our handiwork while enjoying the beautiful sunset and a bourbon. It was a marvelous way to end the day.

The original inspiration for the boxes at our lake came from a family friend that is now my neighbor just up the road from the farm. Mr. Johnny Bradford and my father-in-law Billy “Pop” Hull grew up together in Louisville and I came to know Mr. Johnny through the public land draw hunts at the Noxubee Refuge.

He ran the check-in station for the hunts and was always there for the morning draw and the post-hunt check-in. Duck hunting at the refuge is one of my favorite outdoor experiences and I’ve spent many mornings over the years hunting there with family and friends.

While talking with Mr. Johnny after one of those hunts with Pop, he mentioned that he made and sold wood duck boxes. We asked if we could get on the list, and a few weeks later he stopped by what was then our family hunting camp and is now our home to deliver the hand-made cypress boxes.

We put up two at our lake and helped our friend Poo Chancellor put up his as well. The rest, as they say, is history as the next year woodies began nesting at our lake and have continued to do so each year since.

I called Mr. Johnny this week to get on the list for two more boxes that I plan to place at Camp Bratton-Green this summer with the help of our son Dan and our nephew Billy. I don’t know if they are aware of those plans yet, but I know they will be game to help.

When we talked, I asked him how many boxes he had built and put up over the years. “It would be well into the hundreds,” he said. For what he calls his “27 year career that stretched out over 40 years,” he put up and checked the boxes as part of his job with the Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge.

Now retired, Bradford still builds and sells the boxes. I would wager the “hundreds” have now turned into well over a thousand. To me, that is the epitome of paying it forward.

There is a wealth of resources available online to help if you are interested in building or placing boxes of your own (www.mossyoakgamekeeper.com is an excellent resource). If you have a pond or lake, I highly recommend the project as the symphony these musicians of the waterways provide is magnificent.

Until next time, here’s to enjoying the simple pleasures that surround us in the outdoors, here’s to paying it forward for the land and creatures that give us so much, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.