A Snow Goose Named 5-1V

Each year we witness grand tides of migratory life. Cranes rattle overhead; geese wing south from their breeding grounds; tiny warblers rain into coastal brush after battling a headwind on their way north across the Gulf of Mexico. And it is possible through banding programs to follow individuals, to learn in detail their migratory routes.

Snow and Ross's Geese join Sandhill Cranes in stubble 

at Bosque del Apache NWR (Photos by Narca)

One of the real pleasures of a winter trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is the opportunity to contribute to what is known of the wanderings of Snow and Ross's Geese, by recording the numbers and letters written on any neck collars that we may be lucky enough to see. Banders use particular colors of neck collars for each major nesting colony.

The geese have traditional breeding grounds: Snows wintering at the Bosque are usually from the Western Arctic or Central Canadian Arctic region. Big colonies nest at Prudhoe Bay, Banks Island and Queen Maud Bay. Ross's Geese traditionally have nested in the Queen Maud Gulf region, with a more recently established nesting colony around the McConnell River in western Hudson Bay.

This map shows the main seasonal ranges of Lesser Snow Geese and Ross's Geese in the western Central Flyway. It is based on a map in an article, "Status of Lesser Snow Geese and Ross's Geese wintering in the Interior Highlands of Mexico," by Rod Drewien, Alberto Lafon Terrazas, John Taylor, Manuel Ochoa Barraza and Ruth Shea, published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2003.

As we scan the masses of white geese with our scope, we find on Snow Geese the black-writing-on-yellow collars of geese banded at Queen Maud Bay and the white-writing-on-black collars of geese from Banks Island. Waterfowl biologist Rod Drewien tells us that on very rare occasions, he finds at Bosque the red collars of birds banded on Wrangel Island. Those are becoming very scarce, since the Russians have stopped their banding program, so only the older birds still wear the red collar of Wrangel.

Snow Goose 5-1V allows me to take a distant photo through the scope. After some research, Rod tells me that 5-1V is a female banded in the year 2000 at Queen Maud Bay. In subsequent years, she has been reported up and down the flyway, and this is the second year that Rod has seen her here at Bosque del Apache.

Banding studies have revealed that families from the multiple nesting colonies of Snow and Ross's Geese head south, then mix with families from other colonies on the wintering grounds. The young geese form their pair bonds on the wintering grounds, and the young male then accompanies the young female back to her natal colony to start a family of their own. A constant, strong genetic mixing is the result of this pairing strategy.

So the next time you are enjoying the spectacle of a blizzard of white geese, watch for neck collars! If you are able to read the numbers and letters, make a note, and report it to wildlife refuge personnel. You'll be helping to map the wanderings of a bird like 5-1V!

Dawn at Bosque del Apache

A Daze of Ducks

Our party of friends––Tony Donaldson, photographer Bill Mullins, Alan and I––had the opportunity at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to join Rod Drewien and refuge personnel, including head biologist John Vradenburg, for a morning of duck banding.

Banding programs allow biologists to track the movements of some individuals, to know their nesting and wintering grounds, to learn whether they are healthy and feeding well, to answer questions that are important to a refuge's management. Banding studies can answer questions that bear on the health of an entire population of birds.

500 ducks in a cannon net! (Photos by Narca)

This particular banding project started before dawn, when refuge staff baited a levee to attract the ducks, then fired off a cannon net to capture them. We arrived as the biologists, along with a group of students from Arizona State University, were wading in the icy water and quickly retrieving ducks from the net, in an effort to prevent any from drowning. They had caught far more ducks than expected, with perhaps as many as 500 in the single net! Some of those escaped, but by the end of the morning, 432 had been banded.

Rod is ready to open the cage for the next ducks to come.

Ducks retrieved from the net are put into plastic pens to await processing. 

Too many ducks were caught to fit into the plastic pens, so the others were put into bags in the back of a pickup truck.

Jail break!

Other methods are often employed to trap ducks, including night-lighting to capture individuals and swim-in traps. Old-time waterfowl banders will generally employ cannon nets over dry land, not water, although no doubt the refuge staff had their reasons for handling it the way they did. The method they used certainly was effective at catching large numbers! 

Each method has its pros and cons. One problem with using a net over water is that ducks can become soaked and be unable to fly until they dry off, cormorant-style. Getting that wet is stressful, and the drying ducks are temporarily vulnerable to predators like Coyotes.

A Northern Pintail's wings are temporarily too wet to fly.

Northern Pintail can, however, be wilier than Coyotes. Rod told us of his colleague working with nesting ducks in the prairie pothole region of North Dakota, who watched a Coyote trotting along with a female pintail in his mouth. The Coyote dug a hole and cached his prey, completely burying the duck. Soon after the Coyote left, the dirt started to move, and one bright eye peeked out and looked around. The pintail hen then emerged from the dirt and flew away! She had been playing dead.

A handsome drake Northern Pintail, ready for release

Most of the captured ducks were Northern Pintails, with a number of Green-winged Teal and a handful of Mallards, including this hybrid male Mallard x Mexican Duck. Hybrids of this mix are more often encountered here at the northern edge of the Mexican Duck's range than they are farther south in the bootheel of New Mexico, where green-headed Mallards only rarely breed.

A hybrid Mexican Duck x Mallard shows a gloss of green on his head.

Mexican Ducks are officially considered a subspecies of Mallard, probably based in large part on political ramifications. Hunting programs would be impacted if Mexican Ducks were given full species status, because they would have to be treated as endangered. See Richard Webster's assessment of the issue at http://www.azfo.org/journal/mottled_duck.html.

Rod bands a Northern Pintail drake

Rod is an old hand at banding ducks, geese and cranes. He much prefers to do it sitting in a chair, but the staff at Bosque didn't get that fancy in their set-up.

Here's a method of holding a band that is hard to do with songbird bands!

And what questions were answered by this day's banding? 

To start with, refuge biologists saw that a few of the ducks were loaded with parasitic worms. The weight of many was lighter than expected, raising some concern about nutrition. But other questions will only be answered down the road, as band returns trickle in, or as birds return in future winters and are recaptured. For example, banding studies can clarify whether the problems in a declining bird population are occurring on the breeding grounds, on the wintering grounds, or in migration. Banders are a patient breed, and the questions that banding studies may eventually answer can't always be anticipated. 

Bosque's Other Birds

Bufflehead drake at Bosque (Photo by Narca)

While cranes and drifts of white geese attract much of the attention at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, other exquisite waterbirds also slip quietly through the ponds. Northern Pintail and Shovelers paddle about; Buffleheads dive.

A subtle beauty, the Northern Pintail hen (Photo by Narca)

We have stopped to study a dark raptor when just the head of a Trumpeter Swan comes gliding past our car. The huge bird is swimming in the canal that runs alongside the road, and is too tall to hide its presence.

Trumpeter Swan slipping past (Photo by Narca)

The Trumpeter Swan Society is tracking all sightings of Trumpeters this winter. If you should see one, please report it to Peg Abbott (peg@naturalistjourneys.com). She is heading the effort.

The days are cold (thankfully without wind!), and Greater Roadrunners sun along the route, exposing their dark back and rump feathers to soak up the sun's warmth.

Roadrunner sunning (Photo by Narca)

Winter Interlude: Bosque del Apache

Snow Geese at Sunset (Photo by Narca)

The Rio Grande River hosts many thousands of wintering Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, and other waterfowl. Nowhere can these spectacular flocks be enjoyed and photographed more beautifully than at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

The experience isn't simply one of enjoying impressive flocks of impressive birds. Somehow, when these birds are placed in the Bosque habitat, rich with the rusts and golds of winter, and beneath the expansive New Mexico sky, the whole encounter wakes me up, deeply. The clear light, the cold air, the rattle of cranes––all of it is profoundly rousing.

This time I've journeyed to the Bosque with Noel Snyder, Tony Donaldson and Rod Drewien. Rod is actually working, counting the geese, while the rest of us play. His counts this year of the white geese reveal a mix of roughly 75% Snow and 25% Ross's Geese. Rod has censused geese and cranes for decades, and brings exceptional expertise to the task.

Tony in the lineup (Photo by Narca)

At the Bosque, ponds along the lightly-used highway north of the refuge are a traditional lounging site for geese and cranes. Photographers also stage here at dawn and dusk, hoping to capture that perfect moment when light bathes the waves of incoming cranes and geese. We endure the early morning cold, to watch as sunlight begins to limn the cranes and to ignite the white geese.

Sandhill Cranes (Photo by Narca)

Two coyotes cruise along the shore and cause momentary alert interest among the cranes.

Coyotes and Sandhill Cranes (Photo by Narca)

The cranes stir, preen, dance. We know when they begin to contemplate flight, because the arousing birds stalk towards the edge of the gathering, craning their necks. Soon wave after wave of cranes is airborne, off to find the day's forage. In evening they return to their safe harbor for the night, as do we.

Dusk at Bosque del Apache (Photo by Narca)