Abstracts

Presented by Brett Leach - Email: brettleach@alumni.uwsp.edu

Blue-winged teal (Spatula discors, BWTE) are among the first ducks to migrate south in the fall and last to migrate north in the spring. Primarily wintering in the Neotropics, little is known about their winter habitat use and survival. With recent advancements in technology we are now able to track BWTE via GPS/GSM transmitters and gain crucial information on migration phenology, survival (particularly south of the U.S. border), and identify critical staging, nesting and wintering areas for BWTE. Birds will be captured using baited rocket nets during the spring throughout a four week period in Louisiana to sample early, mid-, and late migrants, as there is a high rate of turnover at banding sites. With the use of baited swim-in traps, BWTE will also be captured and marked in Saskatchewan at multiple sites at the end of August. A minimum of 40 transmitters will be deployed in 2020 and another 40 in 2021, with half being deployed in Louisiana and the remainder in Saskatchewan. Spring of 2019 was the start of the pilot season, in which we marked 10 adult females in Louisiana with OrniTrack-10 GPS-GSM/GPRS/3G transmitters and another 10 hens in Saskatchewan in August 2019 to evaluate transmitter performance. Currently, transmitters record a GPS location once per hour and check in once per day. Among the ten spring-marked birds, six reached the breeding grounds, two stopped transmitting 5-7 days after marking, one did not check in after release, and one unit failed. A majority of the spring marked birds traveled approximately 1,600 km north from the Louisiana banding site over a period of two days, reaching South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota, with one bird traveling 2,980 km over the course of twenty days before going off-line just south of the boreal forest region in Saskatchewan.