Blind Ambitions

Article found at www.deltawaterfowl.org

 The area around Minnedosa in the parklands of southwestern Manitoba has become waterfowl’s equivalent of the “roach hotel”. Ducks check in but they don’t check out.

In recent years, nest-success rates have been so low that Minnedosa qualifies as a “population sink”. Translation: More ducks set up housekeeping each spring than migrate south in the fall.

Yet despite Minnedosa’s apparent lack of productivity, the breeding population of mallards has actually increased, climbing from 10 pairs per square kilometer prior to the 1990s to 16 pairs in the 2000s. Scientists know that given adequate wetland conditions, hen mallards often return to the area where they were hatched, but if Minnedosa is producing so few ducklings, where are all those breeding birds coming from?

That’s the question University of Saskatchewan Ph.D. candidate Dan Coulton set out to answer in 2002. What four years of field research showed is that the local breeding population has been propped up by artificial nesting structures called Hen Houses.

Developed by Delta Waterfowl, Hen Houses are wire-framed, grass-lined cylinders mounted on posts and erected above the waterline to buffer hens and nests from predators.

Nest success for mallards using Hen Houses during Coulton’s study was 58 percent. That’s well above the 12- to 15-percent minimum necessary to sustain the population.

Mallards nesting in Minnedosa’s upland cover haven’t fared nearly as well in recent years. In a study conducted by Ducks Unlimited’s Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research (IWWR), nest success on “managed upland cover” in the Minnedosa region was just 1 percent, and that was in 1998, a time when mallard populations were soaring.

Coulton’s research mirrored those findings: non-tunnel nesters averaged just 2.8 percent nest success, and one year nest success was just one one-hundredth of a percent, which translates to one successful nest for every 10,000 initiated (waterfowl scientists measure nest success using a complex formula rather than a straight percentage).

Hen survival was also higher for birds nesting in Hen Houses. “Hen House females spend less time attending nests,” Coulton explains. “Hens whose nests are destroyed early in the breeding-season will typically attempt to re-nest, often several times. The more time hens spend nesting, the greater their exposure to predators. Most terrestrial predators that prey on hens don’t swim, thus they cannot access hens in nest tunnels.”

Hen Houses, most of them erected as part of Delta’s Duck Production (DDP) program, enjoyed occupancy rates ranging from 85 to 92 percent during Coulton’s study.

Scientists know that nest success and hen survival are the two most important factors in determining mallard populations, and Coulton’s research confirms that Hen Houses are a cost-effective tool for increasing both.

In the beginning Coulton had to consider the possibility that Minnedosa was being populated by ducks hatched in other places. The immigration hypothesis seemed plausible given Minnedosa’s proximity to the highly productive Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres just across the border in North Dakota, but determining where a Minnedosa-nesting hen originated would be a challenge. After all, migrating ducks don’t leave forwarding addresses.

To find the answer, Coulton incorporated a bit of high-tech sleuthing that sounds like a plot from one of television’s crime-scene investigation shows: stable isotopes.

“Ducklings grow their first flight feathers from the food in their natal area, and stable isotope patterns from these foods are incorporated into feathers,” explains Coulton. “They don’t molt those feathers until after their first breeding season, so by analyzing the feather tissue of juvenile birds, we can link the stable isotope values to breeding regions and re-track which region an individual came from.”

Surprisingly, these “isotopic signatures” showed most of the juvenile females captured by Coulton originated not in the U.S. prairies but in Canada’s parklands. While stable isotopes cannot reveal exactly where in the parklands those ducks hatched, Coulton’s banding data did confirm that Hen Houses are an important source of juvenile mallards in Minnedosa.

“My top-performing model said that tunnel recruits were important to the Minnedosa mallard population,” Coulton says. “Of the banded juvenile females I recaptured during the study, 89 percent hatched in Hen Houses the previous year.”

Delta and its partners have installed 3,600 Hen Houses in Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado and Utah and are launching new projects in Minnesota, Iowa and Saskatchewan. Delta anticipates installing another 1,600 Hen Houses this winter.

A native of Bay Village, Ohio, Coulton is working on his Ph.D. at University of Saskatchewan and hopes to publish this research in the near future.

The cold weather really hit us Saturday morning. It was down in the 20’s which is very unusual for this time fo year. That didn’t stop the dogs from picking up the ducks though. Here are a few pictures from some succesful hunts this past weekend.

 Hershey with one of the woodies we shot Saturday:

This is Lucy, a lab I trained this summer with her first succesul hunt:

The teal that were around Saturday the 10th have vanished, looks like they have headed for warmer waters. The woodie numbers were high again; reports all over the state indicate an unusually high number of woodducks.

Well it has been, I believe about two weeks since my last entry. Been really busy with the new chessie pup, getting my dog ready for duck season and working other dogs, plus trying to get scouting for todays duck opener.

 That being said, new posts should be coming almost daily now.

As for today, the duck season got going in full swing. Me and Heshey headed out to a little backwater hole that showed promise. It did not let us down. We took 5 birds total, 3 GW teal drakes, a drake woodie and a hen woodie. Thge birds were pretty active this morning, and saw a ton of woodies. The water conditions were good, but it was much colder than I thought. I made a mistake in not putting a vest on the dog and it showed. She was pretty cold. Lesson learned and a mistake we won’t make again. Sadly, no pictures today, the batteries in the camera were dead, and by the time I got home, got the kennel takec care of and unloaded mys tuff, I had no desire to take any pictures, so I cleaned birds and called it a morning.

As for the bird situation, it doesn’t appear than the big ducks are here yet, but there were enough teal and woodies to make a good shoot. From what I have heard, the piedmont section of NC had some mallards and black ducks. Rumor is that the migration has started as people are reporting that birds are leaving the Ohio River Valley in large numbers. The next couple weeks should bring in some good numbers of birds if Mother nature cooperates.

A report from Delta Waterfowl says that Cananda is considering dropping their Duck Stamp Program:

Delta Waterfowl has gone on record in opposition to two proposals by Environment Canada (EC) that would potentially end the Canadian duck stamp program.

Environment Canada recently posted a “consultation document” proposing three possible outcomes for Canada’s duck stamp. The first, which is supported by Delta, is to leave the program in the hands of Wildlife Habitat Canada (WHC), an independent, non-profit organization that has managed duck stamp dollars since 1984.

Under the other two proposals, resident and nonresident waterfowl hunters would continue to pay a fee, but the stamp would be eliminated and WHC would likely cease operations.

Under the first of those options, fees collected from hunters would be given to a non-government organization for delivery. The second option calls for the fees to be directed to EC’s “protected areas” system, many of which are bird sanctuaries where hunting is banned.

In a letter to Environment Canada, Delta President Rob Olson encouraged Minister of the Environment John Baird to leave the Wildlife Habitat Conservation Stamp program intact.

“We strongly believe that waterfowl hunters, migratory birds and the habitats they depend upon would be best served by continuing the present arrangements with WHC,” Olson wrote. “We believe it is premature to consider alternative methods of fund distribution.”

Olson says diverting the duck hunters’ money to protected areas would be unfair because many of these areas are not open to public hunting. He also objects to the proposal that involves distributing the money to non-government conservation organizations, explaining that, “Delta has lost confidence in the ability of the traditional NGO model to provide adequate levels of accountability and to deliver of programs that benefit ducks and duck hunters. We’re increasingly concerned about what we see as a mission drift away from waterfowl interests.”

Elaborating on those concerns, Olson said, “The traditional model has failed to reduce the wetland-loss rate across prairie Canada, there’s very little permanent protection of key waterfowl habitat and no data to suggest more than a minimal impact on duck production. Delta has been fighting for a new management approach that puts the focus back on ducks.”

Besides, he adds, WHC is already working with numerous agencies and organizations. “The stamp program has served as a significant bridge between conservation interests (that) keeps decisions about allocations of duck stamp dollars out of the hands of a few large corporate conservation interests.”

“Our strength is that we can do things other groups can’t,” says WHC President David Brackett, who for 11 years was director general of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

“We support all the non-government agencies,” Brackett says. “If the fees go to a non-government organization, you’ll have groups like Delta, Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy of Canada competing for these dollars. That’s why WHC was formed in the first place—we don’t compete with the NGOs.

“We’re like venture capitalists who distribute the money where it will do the most good from the duck hunter’s point of view,” he added.

Brackett says he’s also concerned about using the fees for Canada’s protected areas, saying it’s unfair to use fees generated by hunters to fund non-hunting areas.

Since 1984, WHC has invested $52 million in habitat conservation, restoration and enhancement, especially in wetlands and wetland-associated species. About $32 million was generated by duck stamp sales.

In the most recent year, 40 percent of WHC grants went to North American Wetland Conservation Act (NAWCA) partners, including the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation, Delta Waterfowl’s partner on Adopt a Pothole, the largest wetland easement program in Canada.

WHC’s board recently announced a provisional $100,000 grant for Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS), a habitat program jointly launched by Delta Waterfowl and Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP), for a demonstration project on the Vermillion River in Alberta.

Brackett says the consultation process is a review that, given the cost of the program, was probably over-due, and he is hopeful that WHC will be left intact.

Due to the drought we are having in NC, the NCWRC is saying that some permit hunts are going to be cancelled because of dry conditions. The first casuality looks to be the Butner Waterfowl Impoundments. Below is a Media Alert form the NCWRC:

MEDIA ALERT: Butner Waterfowl Impoundments May Remain Dry

RALEIGH, N.C. (Sept. 20, 2007) – Due to severe drought conditions, the waterfowl impoundments at Butner Falls of Neuse Game Land may remain completely dry this fall, according to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

The impoundments are typically filled by pumping water from adjacent creeks, but the Commission is not planning to do so this year unless the area receives significant rainfall in the coming weeks.

The impoundments are open to waterfowl hunting through a randomly drawn special permit hunt, which requires a $5 application fee. Though the permit hunts remain available, prospects look dim for productive waterfowl habitat on Butner’s impoundments.

The permit drawing for Butner’s hunts takes place in early October. When those permits are mailed, the Commission will include updated information about water levels at the site.

Permit hunts are scheduled to take place beginning Nov. 10.

To learn more about the Commission, or other waterfowl hunting opportunities, visit www.ncwildlife.org.

I’ll do my best to post the cancelled hunts as I hear about them.

With the cooler temperatures up north, and even some freeze warning around the Great Lakes Region, we should begin to see the teal arriving here in the south. Teal are typically the first migrators of the year, and many states, including North Carolina, offer an early teal season. The fact that it is still in the 90’s here makes it really tough to think about ducks migrating, but the extended forecast shows some cooler temperatures coming to the southeastern US. I for one, can’t wait for the cooler temperatures. So while out enjoying the early goose season, don’t be surpised to maybe see a few teal buzz your floaters.

Green-Winged Teal drake and hen.

Satuday August 4th, is Ducks Unlimited Volunteer Appreciation Day. They will be hosting celebrations across the nation for the thousands of folks who volunteer time to support Ducks Unlimited.  These events are free and offer a lot of good insight as to what Ducks Unlimited doing across the nation, and in your home state. You can sheck out www.ducks.org and click the banner add for Volunteer Appreciation Day to find locations in your state. if you are not DU member you should still consider checking these events out and learning more about Ducks Unlimited. Remember, if we want to continue the great sport of waterfowl hunting, we must work with groups like DU and Delta Waterfowl, to support duck habitat and predator control.

Last week the US Fish and Wildlife released their preliminary numbers on breeding and nesting surveys. Overall there was a 14% increase in breeding numbers, showing an estimated 41.2 billion breeding ducks.  Northern pintails were the only species to have lower numbers than last year. The full story can be found at on the DU web page

Delta Waterfowl has a great website with lots of great information. Think you know a lot about waterfowl check out these quizzes and see how duck smart you really are.