Canadian Wildlife Services

Plunging into the icy waters of North America's coasts, sea ducks navigate a world unseen by most. Despite representing a significant portion of the continent’s duck species, these unique marine birds are among the least understood. Yet, unlike other waterfowl, many sea duck populations have...

Over the course of the month, we caught mallards, black ducks, northern pintails, redheads, canvasbacks, wood ducks, blue-wing teals, green-wing teals, ring-necked ducks, and a bufflehead. In total, we setup 13 swim-in traps and caught over 2,500 ducks!

In my years of coming back to this very same place, no year has been the same. The landscape, wildlife, and people change everything about the experience.

At that site we were able to place bands on 719 mallards, our target species. We were also able to band a few northern pintail, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, redheads and one bufflehead.

Despite having trouble enticing birds to our traps, we still managed to catch over 500 birds this season including 10 different species!

Annual migratory bird population status reports are posted each year in mid to late August. Highlighted species include waterfowl, American woodcock, mourning dove, band-tailed pigeon, and sandhill Crane. The annual Migratory Bird Hunting Activity and Harvest Report is also included.

As we flew north to start the survey, signs of civilization became more and more distant. The roads and clear cuts disappear leaving us with a sense of peace and awe for this wonderful landscape of wilderness.

Because the number of wetlands is low, suitable nesting and rearing wetlands are crowded with high densities of birds making counting challenging at times.

We were at a remote field camp in Central Saskatchewan, far away from the everything else in the world, including our comfort and amenities, but happy to fulfill our part in a very important facet of North American waterfowl management: duck banding.

The 2022 waterfowl banding season in central Saskatchewan was one for the record books in many ways!

It’s been three years since I have been back to Canada. I was excited that we got to continue the banding project, however, I wanted to see how all the places that we trapped before had changed during the pandemic.

The local community, the knowledge and effort of the bird banding crew, and the subtle beauty of the marsh made my first bird banding experience a memory I will never forget.

It’s been nearly three years since a leg band has been placed on a duck at our bird banding station in the central Saskatchewan’s boreal forest. We returned to the Churchill River this month with tremendous elation to see familiar landscapes and faces while also hoping to see an abundancy of...

Returning to the prairies, and Brooks in particular, after two years away during COVID, was a shock as it looked so different than 2019. Our crew scoured the local area looking for ducks, and we have found some, but not the numbers we’ve typically seen.

The peregrine falcon came out of nowhere and stooped (that’s what it’s called when a falcon dives to catch its prey) at a newly banded blue-wing teal that had stopped to rest and preen itself near our trap site. We had just trapped and banded the teal, but it was still alert enough to look for...

On our first flight, we immediately noticed how dry conditions were in Montana north of the Missouri River. Many of the natural wetlands were dry, stock ponds were less than 20% of capacity, and there were few temporary wetlands present.

It was great to be welcomed back to the north, where the folks are as sincere and genuine as the crystal-clear waters that feed the parkland and boreal waterfowl habitats.

Only three short years ago I was busy submitting data I collected in southern Ontario and Quebec as an observer in the right-front seat of a USFWS-operated Kodiak aircraft. Little could I have imagined that in 2022, I would be back in that very same Kodiak, only this time I was in the left seat,...

Each year the return to Maine is always a big transition as we’ve followed winter north during the survey and then return to full blown summer. I’m blessed to get to experience such an inspiring landscape every year, and to see areas and scenery that few, even locals, will ever experience. However...

Old Man Winter was still clinging to the eastern Canadian prairies upon my arrival, and decided to stick around a bit longer despite my delayed arrival on the scene. Southern Manitoba greeted me with a mix of snow, ice, severe flooding in the southeast, and of course those relentless and gusty...

Our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pilot biologists and observers are returning to the sky and ground to conduct the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey for the first time since 2019, and with the drought on the prairies over the past couple years, anticipation is high.