Tracking Mallards Migration: Research and Conservation for Arkansas' Duck Season

Duck hunting season takes place in November and December in Arkansas and duck hunters and experts are watching for birds coming into the area in October, a group often referred to as "Halloween ducks".

Dr. Doug Osborne, professor in the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, and researcher for the experiment station, explains mallards' migration patterns, the challenges faced by waterfowl populations, and the importance of creating optimal habitats for these birds.

The duck population has declined over the years; Osborne says understanding waterfowl behaviors can better inform decisions to help those numbers rebound by ensuring healthy habitat management to provide diverse food sources and environments.

Osborne discusses how his research into waterfowl behavior is helping inform habitat management and restoration efforts.

He discusses the benefits and significance of his research and protecting waterfowl habitats both for wildlife and human benefits, including the wetlands' role in water quality and flood management, carbon sequestration, providing essential nutrients for waterfowl,  and the cultural and economic importance of duck hunting in Arkansas.

Related Links:

Doug Osborne's Research

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station

College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Recourses

University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture 

Transcript

 [00:00] Doug 

Duck population numbers, abundance is down right now. Even ten years ago, we were up at ten million ducks in the population and now we are down to 5.5 million. So, we’re down a good bit. Lots of things driving it. So, our role down here is to make sure we are providing healthy habitat where they can get the nutrition, the nutrients they need. 

[00:24] Intro/Outro

Welcome to the Arkansas Food, Farms and Forests Podcast. The podcast bringing you the latest on food, fiber and forestry research from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

[00:41] Jenifer

Welcome to Food, Farms and Forests. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Today, we are learning about research around waterfowl, more specifically mallard or wild duck. With duck hunting season coming up in November and December in Arkansas, no better time than now to discuss this topic, and no one better to do it than the expert. We are joined by Dr. Doug Osborne, a professor at the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

Doctor Osborne, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today.

[01:13] Doug

Good morning. Thank you for having me on the show. I look forward to talking to you.

[01:17] Jenifer

I know you have several research papers going on right now, and I want to highlight some of those and their significance. We were talking earlier, and you said currently you're watching out for what you call the Halloween ducks, Halloween mallards. Can you explain what those are and what that is part of?

[01:39] Doug

Yes, I like the Halloween ducks. So, listen, we, you know, in Arkansas here, they're migratory waterfowl. Mallards are migratory. And so, they spent the entire summer up in the prairies, in the prairie wetlands of the United States and Canada. And, and so it's fall and so their resources are going to get limited at some point.

And that'll start off our trapping season. We'll get about, you know, 10 or 12 days of trapping of capture to mark these birds before our hunting season starts. We got a short window of time to catch some birds, to put some of the trackers on it, that we attach to them, so that we can watch their movements during winter.

And, of course, that operation will have to shut down ten days before the start of our hunting season.

[03:23] Jenifer

I like that you mentioned full moon, cold front and wind. So those are some of the things that would impact their migration and their path, and when they would be here, some of the signs you watch out for?

[03:36] Doug

Yeah. 20 years ago when I was a kid, you want to go duck hunting in the worst weather. You know, with those cold fronts, you expect to see new birds. But I will probably provide a spoiler by saying the patterns of waterfowl and their migration and the behavior of these ducks has changed a lot in the last 20 years.

And so sometimes now when we get a cold front, we expect to see new ducks and we're like waiting for them, waiting for them, waiting for them. Good thing we're not holding our breath because sometimes they don't show up. And so sometimes, these fronts that we expect to push new birds don't actually push new birds. And so, there's a lot of behavioral ecology of the species that has changed through time.

Because a lot of things, you know, weather. When it gets cold up north, it doesn't stay as cold as long, right? And so, the ducks can, they can hunker down and just not eat and conserve energy for a couple of days. And then they know it's going to warm back up and their food will be available. And then they can, you know, energetically, it's more costly for that duck to migrate than it is just to hunker down and not eat for a couple days.

So, there's that sort of behavioral mechanism that birds are dealing with and coping with changes in weather conditions and such.

Nonetheless, migration is on right now. We have a lot of ducks here, mostly smaller species of dabbling ducks like the teal and the pen tails, you know, are just known to be early migrants. And white-fronted geese. You know, we'll start to, we're starting to see quite a few of the white-fronted geese. And they're, you know, they nest in the Arctic tundra. And so, they come here during the winter. So, they're starting to show up, too, in pretty good numbers.

[05:21] Jenifer

You mentioned those changes in weather changes and winters not being as long. Have you noticed over the years then - I know you said we're still getting ducks and we have some here and coming - but are the numbers decreasing over the years compared to 20 years ago?

[05:38] Doug

Yeah. Yes, ma'am. So, I would say the duck population numbers and overall abundance are down right now compared to the long term. We're kind of in a low trough. Even ten years ago, we were up at 10 million ducks in the population, and now we're down to 5.5 million. So, we're down a good bit.

Lots of things driving that. Probably primarily weather and habitat-related in the breeding grounds. That's the most important driver. You know, when the prairie ponds are dry, and they don't have water in the temperatures in prairie Canada, or, you know, the growing seasons getting longer and the temperatures are getting warmer, it allows farmers to just tilt a little bit more land, and they get a little bit more time to work their ground. And so, we're losing wetlands.

So, there's a lot of confounding factors, one certainly being weather and land use related. But overall, to answer your question, populations are down. They're very cyclic. And so, we hope that our low is at its low right now, and it's going to come back very soon. And so, we'll see how that goes.

[06:52] Jenifer

Okay. Speaking of coming back, is that what part of your research is for? Is there anything we can do as a population, duck hunters, as citizens and as people who are living here in these areas that we want this natural migration to continue? Is there anything we can do to help that, or is there anything we should do to help that? And then how your research comes in to answer those questions.

[07:19] Doug

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. And I am not a population ecologist. I don't study the numbers and how, you know, growth rates and stuff like that are. But I'm definitely in tune with those things, right? Here in Arkansas being at sort of the southern range of the sort of core. This is really, the Arkansas Delta really is sort of the core, the center, the red spot in the heat map, right? Sort of the historical wintering range for mallards in this flyway. It's a very important region historically.

I would tell you that our that our data, you know, we've been doing a banding project for maybe going on 12 years now in Arkansas. We've banded over 45,000. Yeah, about, I'd say over 45,000 mallards in 12 years in Arkansas during the winter. And we do that primarily in February.

Beginning to sort of analyze that longer-term dataset, it's clear that our distribution during the winter is shifting north. And so, we're seeing a northern shift, and those ducks are just not quite coming down here as far. And it's like statistically, it's like a few degrees, right? But it is slowly creeping further north. And a lot of that is probably driven by the way we manage the Delta, right? And so, we have to, down here, our role in waterfowl is making sure they have very important, the very important pieces of the habitat that they need to survive for winter. We need to send these birds back to the prairies next spring very healthy. They need to have extra lipid and protein content stored in their body so they can go back. So the hens can lay nests. And it's a very protein sort of rich, energetically expensive, costly time of year for them to nest. And so, the healthier they are when they go back, the better they are during their reproduction.

And so, our role down here is to make sure that we're providing a healthy habitat where they can get the nutrition, the nutrients they need, the energy they need to survive. Both survive the winter - at least a good portion of them that don't go down, by the, you know, the gun, which is okay, but we just we got to provide the habitat for them.

And so that's what really, what our research is looking at with these transmitters. So, we put these little transmitters that are about 20g, 18 to 20g apiece. And they put them on their back just like you would a backpack. And you got shoulder straps. And these straps go over the duck’s body, and it holds on and it's creating, it's recording these GPS locations of where that bird moves during the day.

It records elevation, you know, height, altitude. When the birds are flying, it records how fast it's flying. And it records just a bunch of things. These devices also have what's called accelerometers. Just kind of like your Fitbit to where it's measuring, you know, x, y, z coordinates. So, the bird's tipping down, forward, feeding into the water. Then you can, you can evaluate what their sort of behaviors are. So, they're just, it's just an incredible amount of data.

But on a sort of a broad scale, we can look at how these transmitter mark birds are moving around the delta and what habitats they're using, right? How much time are they spending in various habitats?

How much time are they spending in the woods? When they're in the timber, are they in the thicket part of the timber? Or are they in the area that has the big, wide-open, beautiful trees that have a bunch of red oak acorns, or are they in the opening? Are they in the thicket or are they in, you know, are they on the edge?

Are they in the middle? So, that gives us a feel for what that bird wants, right? And so, when we summarize that, you know, the type of habitat they're using, how much time they spend in rice fields, how much time are they spending in sort of unmanaged - I guess what we call actively managed moist soil. And so that just tells us, say, if there's been 50% of the time in a forest during the day and 30% in rice, or 50% at rice, but it's at night, it just gives us that understanding of what they need.

That's really sort of the chucks of the projects that we're looking at understanding sort of the local movements and how different pieces of that landscape and what's the, just the position of those pieces.

What is a wetland complex kind of made of? Like, what are the different components in there that's important for ducks? And then we take that information to the refuge and say, hey, you know, they need, you know, 10% of their area needs to be sort of sanctuary, unhunted area where they got someplace to rest without being ran all over the place.

And because that's really important for energy conservation for that bird. And so, so these sort of local projects, understanding their movement ecology helps us to inform sort of the management on, you know, public and private wetland areas in the state.

And then very fine scale, we got another project that a student is working on looking at the fine scale factors in the forest, like what is really the drive in the bird to use the forest like? And when they're in there, how much of it needs to be, you know, like I said earlier, the thicket?

And so really the purpose behind that project is to help us inform, to inform restoration because there's a lot of energy and effort in the state right now for improving forest health and bottomland and hardwood systems and wetlands. You know, if we could use the information on how the mallard uses the forest to help inform what that restoration process could potentially look like in the future or what we need it to look like to benefit the ducks, that's kind of what that fine-scale analysis of, of tree species and composition and structure. Really that's the purpose of that.

[13:49] Jenifer

Another research project is the Climate-Smart bottomland, speaking of restoration, which is trying to restore a lot of our wetlands and hardwood. I talked about this on the podcast before, and your name was mentioned as being a part of this huge project, having other researchers involved as well. Can you talk a little bit about that and how in your work specifically is contributing to the Climate-Smart bottomland project?

[14:17] Doug

Yeah, I'm happy to be a part of that project. It is a really, really good effort by Dr. Tian and then some foresters there in Monticello and other campuses. We got UAPB, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff are partners on there and Texas A&M. And, and of course, I'm the waterfowl ecologist. 
 
 So, we are trying to go into some pieces of land that the farmers have or excuse me, that landowners have had and may have harvested the timber off of it 50 years ago and it didn't grow back in quality timber, right? So, we're trying to go in and we're enhancing those by improving, by planting oaks. And so that's the gist of the sort of overall project. 

My part is to help inform future plantings of hardwoods. Like there's some models out there that we use in the wildlife world to help us to prioritize our funding.

Where do we… if we had funding for restoring bottomland hardwood, where does that money go? Well, there's a prioritization map. It's like a, it's like a thunderstorm map or the heat map like the one you see on the news on the Weather Channel, right? In the hottest part in the middle is where we should focus on our restoration.

Well, what impact is that going to have if, if I can go in there under that, that highest priority area and if I can restore 1% of the landscape, what impact is it going to have on ducks? If I can restore 5%, 10%, 20, or 50% of that priority area, what impact may that have?

So, our role in this climate project is to put some transmitter devices on ducks and see how they're utilizing the restored forest, the WRP, the tracts of land that have been replanted and to improve the wetland value right to sequester carbon, to hold floodwaters, all the things that wetlands do, also provide habitat for ducks.

And so, our role is to understand the importance of restoration and young plantings of trees to ducks. And ultimately, sort of do some predictions. If, you know, Bruce Westerman’s trillion tree planting effort comes to fruition, where do we plant those trillion trees, and what impact is that going to have?

If we do so, we're going to model that out and say, hey, if we can restore ten, five, ten, 15% of the landscape, this is the impact we're going to have on mallards. So that's really sort of the direction and my role in this is to think about sort of providing the information that's going to help us to inform future restoration. 

[16:54] Jenifer

Why is it important that we create these optimal habitats for ducks, whether it is at a level of a duck hunter, for example, or at a bigger scale for the ecosystems that these animals are part of? Why do ducks want, need, and deserve these optimal habitats?

[17:15] Doug

It's an amazing question. So why should we care? Well, first of all, wetlands are incredibly important to cycling texture and excess nutrients on the landscape, so they don't end up in our drinking water, right? The wetlands are filtering this surface water. It's filtering the nutrients out of that. So, if that water ends up into our in our aquifer, it's clean.

Environmentally, you know, the trees themselves are sequestering carbon, right? To the, to the point as they continue to grow it will help. Forest is obviously going to help offset carbon emissions in this, in our country. So, in terms of that, it's, it's a really important function. I mean, the wetland function. So, people should care because wetlands are really important, and they are probably one of the most threatened bottomland hardwood systems themselves, I would say in the southeast, and definitely in Arkansas, it’s probably the most threatened inland-related ecosystem that's going to be impacted by climate.

And so, these are things that I think this project is helping to get, you know, get on the sort of on the forefront of, and, and help to better understand and hopefully can help us to, you know, pick up momentum on for restoration forest. So, the ecosystem itself has tons of benefits: one - for humans, of course, two: for wildlife.

And then the human benefit from wildlife, right? And the Arkansas benefit from waterfowl hunting. One, I mean, Arkansas, it's just so, it's so embedded in our culture here. In the heritage, right? The hunting heritage here is so strong. I’ve never been anywhere in my life with that the generational love for hunting, for waterfowl, here is as strong as you know, I had not seen it anywhere else. And so that in itself is really important, I think, to a lot of people, and important to me. Just the love and passion for the sport and the resource that we have and we're grateful for. 
 
 You know, but also the economy, right? Like, there's so many small rural communities scattered throughout the Delta, Arkansas, that are 100% funded on the agriculture side.

And then in the wintertime, the hunters coming in and spending money at the gas stations and that kind of thing, filling up their boat. Those are important, very important sources of funding for some of these rural communities. So, it's very important to the rural community. It's important to our hunter heritage. It's important to the state.

And then ultimately, it's important for the ducks, like just our populations are down right now. Like they can rebound quickly. And they, I hope, they will sooner than later. But when they do, we need to make sure we get healthy forests. We need to make sure that we got healthy, you know, flooded ag fields associated with those forests.

They can't find all their food in ag field, like, they can get in there and eat the rice that's on the ground that got spilled and left over from the harvest process. But there's amino acids and other nutritional needs that they can't get out of the crops that they need to get out of an acorn, or they need to get out of the insects that grow in some of these fields and or in the woods.

So, the diversity in all the different pieces of the landscape that ducks need is, you know, is really important, you know, really for acquiring all the nutrients, obviously, that they need to maintain sort of healthy body conditions.
  

[21:31] Jenifer

Well, Dr. Osborne, those are all of the questions I had prepared for you. Is there anything else you would like to mention that we didn't get to talk about this?

[21:40] Doug

Then we may have to reschedule, because, you know, I'm a professor, and they hire me to talk. And so that's what I do. I can fill your 20-minute time slot pretty quickly. So, I hope I provided something useful for your listeners. And, and again, I hope they can reach out to me if they get anything else.

[22:00] Jenifer

Absolutely. I really appreciate your time and sharing your knowledge with us here today.

[22:05] Doug

Thank you.

[22:06] Jenifer

That was Dr. Doug Osborne, a professor at the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, talking to us about his research into waterfowl in Arkansas. Thanks for listening. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Don't forget to subscribe.

[22:26] Intro/Outro

The Arkansas Food Farms and Forest Podcast is produced by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Visit aaes.uada.edu for more information.