The Art of Duck Banding: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts
It seems like an easy task — just catch and band ducks. I mean, we were just here last year and had great luck. How hard could it be this time around? As we drove across southeastern South Dakota, we passed agricultural fields and cow pastures interspersed with barren patches of dry, cracked earth, marking the presence of has-been wetlands. The prairies were in a drought, and the extremely hot days constantly reminded us that it was not going away. Conditions were much drier than our field season last year. Most of our previous trapping sites were unrecognizable; covered in annual sunflowers or water so shallow that it made a shorebird haven with hardly any ducks in sight. This was going to prove much harder than I thought.
We began our month-long venture by scouting for trap sites, because you can’t band ducks if you can’t find any! The wetlands we eventually found erupted in a chorus of blue-winged teals, mallards, pintail, gadwall, and coots, all en masse. Large flocks of egrets (cattle and great), white pelicans, shorebirds, and gulls also accompanied them. If there was water, there were birds on it. These new locations lead us to connect with the landowners, and they were not kidding when they called South Dakota the “land of great places and faces.’’ We would not have been able to continue banding operations if it was not for the great people of South Dakota permitting us to trap on their land. So, thank you!
Trapping and banding ducks is a labor of love and patience. It is easy to get discouraged driving up to a site that is teeming with ducks, only to see our traps empty, save for painted turtles and the bait untouched from the day before. However, once the ducks acclimated to our traps, we cashed in our sweat equity for crates of birds (followed by more sweat equity). Our traps were flush with ducks, a stark difference from the week prior. We caught many different species, including a surprise adult drake lesser scaup and quite a few redheads. We banded over 2,000 ducks this season and not a single coot.
It is a remarkable feeling to hold a duck in your hands and marvel at how those small wings take them to far off lands that you can only imagine, with no compass nonetheless! Flight is so very important to duck survival so they must replace their worn feathers with brand new ones. We use this feather replacement on their wings to help us age the bird in hand. Each wing I had the joy of inspecting was a work of art, each unique with their own subtle differences in wear and color. To hold something so beautifully and thoughtfully constructed, yet powerful enough to carry it long distances, always leaves me in wonder and is a reminder of why the work we do is so important. As always, for the ducks (and coots).
