May 01 2015
Duck Houses
The Red-breasted merganser is a duck that specialises in fishing. We frequently see them in spring and autumn, but they rarely seem to breed here. Considering that our lakes are highly overpopulated and any effort to cull the population has been largely unsuccessful, we decided to set up two artificial nesting sites for these birds.
Such nests were made traditionally in northern Sweden for collecting eggs. Our purpose is solely to lure them into thinning our fish lakes though. According to research a breeding couple can take 20000 small trout in a season!
Now, if the otter could return as well, we’d have high quality fish in no time at all.
My brother Arne (in picture) and I built the nests using moss, rocks and planks. We set them up on two small islands so land-based predators like foxes and badgers will have a hard time getting to them.
Torjus
Get my book "Traditional Trout Fishing: Fishing for Survival in the North (Volume 1)
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