"the most beautiful bird" (excerpt)
Craig Bitler, Wildlife Biologist, bent sideways to peer at the scrabbling legs of a captive mallard.
"Banded." Craig straightened. "Let her go."
The man holding the duck tossed it skywards. Its wings pumping frantically, the duck flew across the weed-covered marsh and
disappeared into the mist steaming over the water. The morning had quickly grown warm and humid, the kind of day when heat shimmers
on the blacktop that laces around the perimeter of the refuge.
"Leo." Craig pointed to a small teal in wire cage. "Get the little guy."
Leo Hollein knelt on a wad of burlap and adjusted the decrepit straw hat covering his gray hair. His torso protruded from a narrow
opening in the center of the cage, like a khakhi-clad jack-in-the box. Trapped ducks milled about his feet. Reaching under the wire
into the far corner of the cage, he caught the diminutive green-wing teal and held the bird out for inspection.
"Naked," Craig said.
Suzie Ponce, an intern on summer hiatus from the University of Texas, put the teal in a small crate with a wood duck. Leo worked quickly,
plucking another delicate woodie from under the brutish mallards. Sliding his fingers under the joint where the wings meet the body,
he got hold of the skittish hen and dropped it into the holding pen. For the next five minutes Leo reached back into the mass of skittering,
nervous ducks. Other volunteers, most of them retirees, helped load the ducks into portable wood crates. One man was slow to shut the lid of
the crate and a duck burst free, pulling the shouts of the startled men into the slipstream of her escape.
The culprit, a rotund, florid man in his sixties, shuffled his feet.
"We all know only the banded ones escape."
"You saw a band?" Craig asked.
"Maybe." The man nodded vigorously. "Yes. I'm sure of it."
"I don't suppose you read the number, too?"
Laughter spread through the group. Sorting through the trapped animals, Leo released the banded mallards and passed the others to volunteers,
who put the birds in a separate pen. Suzie took the last unbanded duck as Leo stood and rubbed his legs. Summer interns and volunteers had
pulled aquatic vegetation from the pond's shore, then spread gravel over the dirt. The opened beach offered the birds easier access to the
traps, but the gravel proved hard on the knees.
The morning had netted a small collection of wood ducks, almost a dozen mallards, and the teal. Craig had laid out three traps in all.
Called confusion traps, they operated on a simple premise. The traps branched out, like spokes on a wheel; ducks followed the supply of corn
to the hub of the wheel and ambled into the spokes. For most of the week the sides and roofs of the traps remained open, to acclimate the ducks
to the cages. On three alternate nights, after the ducks settled into their evening roosts, staff or volunteers closed the traps. In the morning
the ducks, arriving at the beach to feed, walked down funneled chutes into the closed pens.
Timing was important. The captured ducks sometimes tried to force their way free, jamming their heads through the slats and leaving themselves
vulnerable to hungry raccoons, fox and skunk. One year a mystery predator worked its way into a duck trap. In the tight quarters, faced with milling,
panicked birds, it was not kind. The predator escaped; the ducks did not. Anxious to avoid a repeat visit, Craig placed Have-A-Heart predator traps,
baited with canned cat food, along the road. The traps soon yielded various animals: raccoons, skunks, a snapping turtle. It was not a foolproof
solution. Banding started early, to minimize the birds' time in the pens.
At the pickup truck Craig set up his outdoor workshop. A solid man, with freckles and a reddish beard, he first came to the refuge in 1991 with a B.S. in
Wildlife Management. Nineteen years after arriving in New Jersey, Craig still spoke with a California drawl. Over the phone his voice evoked images of beaches
and surfboards; in his office, where the heads of a giant moose and a caribou adorned the walls, that image underwent a seismic shift. He talked about
hunting grouse in Utah, caribou in Alaska, mule deer in New Mexico. An eclectic collection of odds and ends from work and travel backed up his stories. Hip high
waders and rubber boots of various sizes hung upside down from pegs. Pine cones, one almost a foot long, perched alongside bleached animal skulls. Staples
secured a souvenir poster of wildlife in Brazil to the wall behind his desk. Hard hats rested near a warning sign: Tree Strikes You're Out. Among the
collection of shells and feathers and skulls, his computer looked faintly incongruous, the keyboard too small for hands shaped by working outdoors.
Craig opened a small canvas bag and spread gear across the tailgate. The aluminum bands came from the federal Bird Banding Laboratory at Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland. Strung like beads, they clanked together on loops of string. Each string held a different series of
bands and sported an identifying tag: Mallard HY-M (hatch year male) Mallard HY-F (hatch year female), etc. The size of the bands varied with the species.
Each band had eight to nine digits imprinted on the metal. It is a system built, in part, on serendipity. Whoever finds a banded bird must be willing to
contact Patuxent with the time, date, and method of capture. Many bands simply disappear, but information from others finds its way into the database.
The data have helped establish, among other things, migratory routes, mating and pair bonding patterns, and longevity records (a mallard topped twenty-six
years, a wood duck twenty-two).
Banding also provides hours of entertainment.
Craig set a clipboard containing datasheets on the tailgate. The volunteers, gray-haired men in their late fifties and early sixties, dropped their torn
latex gloves, spattered with guano and feathers, into the truck bed. No one seemed particularly worried about disease or parasites, despite the slick,
milky excreta that often coated the ducks' bellies. The men snapped fresh gloves over their hands as Suzie lifted a wood duck hen from the cage. The banders
had different grips; Leo held the ducks at the juncture of wing and shoulder. Suzie imitated Craig and laced her fingers across a duck's breast so that her
thumbs met across the bird's back. Trying to handle a frantic, nervous duck disconcerts novices. Sometimes the woodies let out a plaintive mewing sound and
try to wiggle free. For the volunteers who adjust, the experience is a revelation. To hold a wood duck is to experience the sublime. They feel surprisingly
light; a hen measures approximately 19" long and weighs on average 1.4 lbs. The male averages 20", and weighs a quarter pound more than the hen. They are so
small it is possible to feel their hearts beating, a steady rhythm under breast feathers as soft as eyelashes. Suzie rolled the hen onto its back; the hen's
scrambling, clawing panic stopped as if she'd been sedated. Rimmed with bright yellow flesh and a white, comet-shaped teardrop, her eye shone like a bead of
smoky topaz. Suzie put the duck between her legs and examined the ragged, pointy ends of the tail feathers.
"Hatch year."
Leo took a band from the string and opened it with a pair of reverse pliers. After sliding the band around the duck's leg, he pressed the ends together to
form a neat metal oval. He worked quickly, careful to close the ends so that no weeds or garbage could get caught in the gap. Suzie flipped the banded hen
right side up and tossed her skywards. With a sharp, distressed kr-r-r-i-k, k-r-r-i-k, the hen skimmed the water and banked towards the distant trees. Craig
logged the band number and age, sex and species of duck.
A second team banded another wood duck. The latex gloves had already begun to disintegrate. The banders worried more about their grip on the pliers, anxious
to avoid folding the aluminum ring in on itself. Then the band must be reopened with the reverse pliers and closed again. They pressed the band shut and
released the drake. Suzie carried the small teal to the truck.
"How lovely," I said.
"Tastes good too," Craig answered.
The men laughed.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Research methodology
Hands on experience over the course of five years.
Data on longevity from
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/homepage/long1290.htm
Clapp, R. B., M. K. Klimkiewicz, and J. H. Kennard. 1982. Longevity records of North American birds: Gaviidae through Alcidae. J. Field Ornithol. 53(2):81-124.
Clapp, R. B., M. K. Klimkiewicz, and A. G. Futcher. 1983. Longevity records of North American Birds: Columbidae through Paridae. J. Field Ornithol. 54(2):123-137.
Klimkiewicz, M. K., R. B. Clapp, and A. G. Futcher. 1983. Longevity records of North American Birds: Remizidae through Parulinae. J. Field Ornithol. 54(3):287-294.
Klimkiewicz, M. K. and A. G. Futcher. 1987. Longevity records of North American Birds: Coerebinae through Estrilididae. J. Field Ornithol. 58(3):318-333.
Klimkiewicz, M. K. and A. G. Futcher. 1989. Longevity records of North American Birds: Supplement I. J. Field Ornithol. 60(4):469-494.
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