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Young Ducks Aplenty for Coming Game Bird Season

Media release from Eastern Fish & Game

Young Ducks Aplenty for Coming Game Bird Season


Duck hunters should have plenty of young ducks in their sights when the game bird season comes round in May, according to Fish & Game Eastern Region staff.

Senior Fish & Game Officer Mathew Mc Dougall says that’s the finding from their recent operation to trap and band mallard and grey ducks. The information gathered is used to help plan hunting limits and work out population trends.

A thousand ducks were banded at sites along the East Coast and Bay of Plenty, and information collected on the age and sex of the birds.

Most of the birds trapped were juveniles, and at more than 80 percent, it was the most we’ve ever recorded, Mr Mc Dougall says.

“This is good news for the game bird harvest in that these young birds, who haven’t learnt the lessons of older and wiser birds, are the ones which often end up in the firing line.”

At the same time however, the banding exercise failed to turned up many adult mallard and grey ducks. “It’s a bit of an enigma - the trap sample usually gives us an indication of the population at large but this year we caught very few adults. In some parts of the region we struggled to catch any birds.”

More research is required to pin down what is happening with these species, Mr Mc Dougall says. There are several possible explanations.

One is that the adults were still moulting their flight feathers and simply not inhabiting the wetlands we were trapping. Another possibility is that “with all the rain we’ve had over summer, the adults don’t need a free feed and kept away from the traps.”

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“We won’t know the answer until well after the season has finished and we can estimate survival rates from the bands which hunters return, and compare the returns with previous years.

Mathew Mc Dougall says that staff also had concerns that Reporoa and to a lesser degree Gisborne populations may be depressed. He says that taking account of this research, staff feel that a conservative approach is warranted in setting regulations for the coming season.

Fish & Game Eastern Region is considering a six week season with a 10 bird limit.

Staff have also surveyed other species and found that Paradise shelduck populations are stable. In the Waiapu River area in Ruatoria a flyover spotted six large flocks of 1000 to 3000 birds in each.

Black swan populations were found to be healthy with more than 6000 birds counted, and a stable trend showing for the past decade.

BACKGROUND:

The annual banding involves capturing the ducks in baited traps and attaching coded bands to their legs before releasing them. This provides information to compare with the previous breeding season, which helps in setting duck shooting limits.

Fish & Game use banding find out survival rates for juveniles and adults, males and females.

Recovery of a band also means the distance between the banding site and recovery site can be calculated, as can the time elapsed since banding - giving an indication on how long the bird lived for.

ENDS


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