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Tracking Pintail Migration
Stopover points for migratory birds are so important!
© Claudine Lamothe, CC
Thirty years ago, there were six million Northern Pintails in North America. Now? Just over three million. Duck numbers plummeted in the 1980s drought. When returning rains improved breeding habitat, duck abundance rebounded. Except for Northern Pintails. During migration, the birds fly first to staging areas such as the wetlands of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Klamath Basin. If we want more pintails in the fall, we have to take care of these stopover points, particularly by ensuring adequate water.
BirdNote®
Tracking Pintail Migration
By Todd Peterson
This is BirdNote!
[Call and trill-whistle of the Northern Pintail]
What’s going on with Northern Pintails? Thirty years ago, there were six million of these slender, elegant ducks throughout North America. Now? Just under three and a half million. Overall duck numbers plummeted in the 1980s, when drought hit the Prairie Pothole region of the Dakotas and southern Canada, where many pintails nest. But when returning rains improved breeding habitat, duck abundance rebounded. Except for pintails. Scientists affiliated with Ducks Unlimited are trying to understand why.
We don’t know the whole story yet, but three polar-orbiting satellites have given some answers. In the West, hen pintails were fitted with transmitters. Their signals showed that when the birds migrate north from California’s Central Valley, they fly first to staging areas such as Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon.
[Wetlands at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge]
If they find enough water in the wetlands there, they can feed steadily and build up the protein they need to lay and hatch eggs farther north. So one thing we’re learning is that if we want more pintails in the fall, we have to take care of these stopover points, particularly by ensuring adequate water.
[Call and trill-whistle of the Northern Pintail]
I’m Michael Stein, and there’s more to this story at birdnote.org.
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Call of the Northern Pintail provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by W.W.H. Gunn. Malheur National Wildlife Refuge recorded by Greg Budney.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2010 Tune In to Nature.org November 2012 Narrator: Michael Stein
ID#101005NOPIKPLU NOPI-01c
http://www.werc.usgs.gov/dixon/pdfs/aallSONECfinalrpt.pdf
Todd Peterson
Writer
Michael Stein
NarratorSights & Sounds
