GREECE — Standing on a stepladder 100 yards into a cattail marsh off Island Cottage Road, I’ve been given the honors of slamming a steel pole into the muck using a heavy-handled device called a rod-pounder.

“Let’s go, get the real experience,” urges Peter Hofmann, the gregarious president of the Lake Plains Waterfowl Association, as I work up a sweat.

“Looks good,” says Bill Morrison, steadying the ladder.

Jeff Hoefen then passes up a wood duck box. I affix it atop the pole and Bill Izyk tightens it down with a bolt. Next, Hofmann attaches a section of plastic barrel below the box to ward off predators — raccoons love wood duck eggs.

He then hands up a bag of nesting material — wood chips — and instructs me in the time-tested technique of getting the chips to stay in the box instead of covering one’s shirt: tip upside down, fluff upward, close the door, reach inside the hole, extract the bag.

Voila! My work is finished.

Another wood duck box set in place and ready for the spring nesting season — my first, but just one of approximately 270 the dedicated members of LPWA have been erecting for nearly 60 years.

“Leo’s Box, we’ll call it,” Hofmann says.

The colorful wood duck is among nature’s most handsome waterfowl. It also stands as a poster child for what conservation efforts can do.

A tree cavity nester, “woodies” were once threatened with extinction due to overhunting, the draining of wetlands and clearing of mature forests for farming and development. But thanks to a 23-year moratorium on hunting (1918-1941), habitat protection and nesting box projects, wood duck numbers are back to the point where they are now the second-most populous game bird next to the mallard.

Building and maintaining nesting boxes has been a LPWA tradition ever since the club was established in 1952. Each year, bedding material must be replaced and data collected on occupancy and hatch rates.

About 40 percent of the club’s boxes produce chicks.

Our mission on this sun-filled March morning is to erect one new box and maintain the final six boxes of the club’s inventory.

Our six-man crew of Greece residents includes Hofmann, 48, whose grandfather, Herb Naber, was one of the club’s founding members; Izyk, 51, an electrician and volunteer fireman who out of habit carries the ladder; Hoefen, 35, a postal worker who began hanging out in duck blinds not long after learning how to walk; and Morrison, 77, a club member since the late 1950s who has more energy than all of us.

“There’s not a lot of marsh around here that I haven’t been through,” he says with pride.

The final member of our work party is Hofmann’s grandson, Jacob Peterson, 9, who is missing school but hardly playing hooky.

“We call it a conservation field day,” Hofmann says.

Jacob’s classroom today is the delicate Lake Ontario wetlands teeming with wildlife, his teachers a band of dedicated outdoorsmen passing on their knowledge and appreciation of the Braddock Bay State Fish and Wildlife Management Area to the next generation.

But while the honking of Canada geese overhead gets these veteran waterfowlers’ hearts racing, today’s not for hunting, it’s for the ducks.

The new nesting box is placed so that the mother wood duck can use the prevailing west wind to slow down and hit the opening. There, she will do a somersault into the structure, flare out her wings, and land without breaking her clutch of eggs.

“The wind is like a brake for them, like landing a plane,” Morrison says.

We head down Island Cottage Road to check the first of two existing boxes near Buck Pond. Each are labeled “Lina & Emily, Troop 425.” Box projects are popular with Scouts.

Jacob climbs the ladder and swings open the front door of box K1.

“I think I just saw a tail,” he says after hearing stories of what other creatures are often found inside — mice, squirrels, screech owls and honeybees.

To Jacob’s relief, there are no critters inside this box, just the tell-tale sign of a wood duck hen: small, gray, dullish feathers.

At the second site, I reach inside and strike the motherlode: 13 hatched eggs from 2009.

“A baker’s dozen,” Hofmann says, making note of the find.

We head to our final three stops, all along the Lake Ontario Parkway.

Inside box 5B, Jacob discovers one of nature’s great wonders — screech owl pellets. Break them open and one can discover digested bones of small rodents.

“I feel bad because a lot of people don’t get to see what we see,” says Izyk, one of Lake Plains’ hunter education instructors. “What we do isn’t just for the benefit of hunters. We’re the eyes and ears out here but the wildlife belongs to all people.”

Our fifth box to check is set deep into the marsh at the edge of a wetland pool. Beavers have been at work. The men lament the decline of muskrats, another important marsh inhabitant that eats cattails and creates open water for ducks.

Wood duck box No. 52 offers up a dead mouse but no egg remnants; the bedding was still inside the plastic bag someone failed to remove.

A short walk to the west is box No. 57, our final duck hotel. I reach inside to find swan feathers fetched by a songbird, a tiny white egg, one owl pellet and a mud wasp nest.

“Well guys, that’s the last one for the season,” Hofmann says.

Soon, the wood ducks will return, laying eggs and hatching babies by April and May. Once hatched, the chicks crawl up a ladder inside the box made of wire mesh, drop to the ground, and head to water — guided by their mother’s signal — where they find their first nourishment.

“The same day they hatch they’re on their own,” says Morrison, still fascinated after decades of wood duck duty.

It’s been a good day. For Hofmann, carrying on a legacy his grandfather helped begin is a powerful connection to family and the wetlands he loves.

“It’s enjoyable,” he says. “It’s not just the duck hunting community but what we do for the community as a whole, the outdoors as a whole. Keeping people aware of what’s going on around them, that’s the key.”

The wood ducks are returning. Their rooms are ready.