Unity College Hybrid Learning student, Ryan Dobbins, is taking charge of the Unity duck banding station this fall as his internship project. He has been baiting several sites with corn around the Lake Winnecook (AKA "Unity Pond") area since classes began to get the ducks used to coming in for food. On Thursday, he worked with Associate Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Management, Aly McKnight, and Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Game Bird Biologist, Kelsey Sullivan, to set up traps at three of the sites. In addition to deploying traps at the remaining sites with some other Hybrid Learning student volunteers, Ryan will continue to bait each site until the ducks are accustomed to the trap structures. We should be ready to set the traps and start capturing ducks within the next week — we will most likely be working with mostly mallards, wood ducks, and American black ducks. Ryan and his crew will identify the species, age, and sex of each bird and give it a numbered US FWS metal leg band. The data he reports will be combined with data from other duck stations across the flyway and used by flyway waterfowl biologists to estimate annual reproductive success and hunting mortality.
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