Abstracts

Presented by Beau Bauer - Email: bbauer@nemourswildlife.org

Artificial nest boxes have played a pivotal role in recovery and management of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) in North America for over a century. Wood ducks now comprise a significant percentage of the annual waterfowl harvest in the Atlantic and Mississippi Flyways, and are an inclusive species for the recently adopted multi-stock adaptive harvest management protocol for the Atlantic Flyway. While numerous studies have addressed nest box use, hatching success, duckling production, and habitat characteristics, few studies have addressed female recruitment by box-nesting populations and such data are lacking on a regional-scale. This lack of critical population metrics resulted in biologists from the southern portion of the Atlantic Flyway to list the need for contemporary regional-scale estimates of wood duck reproductive success and female recruitment rates as a high priority. Subsequently, we have initiated a pilot study in 2019 to evaluate methodology and logistics required to conduct a multi-state female recruitment study throughout the southeastern United States for 3–5 years. To date, box use in our study site (Lake Moultrie, South Carolina) was 53% (n = 166). From these boxes, we banded adult female wood ducks (n =112) and web-tagged newly hatched ducklings (n = 278). We also measured abiotic and biotic variables at each box to evaluate proximate habitat effects on box selection. This pilot study is being conducted as a partnership among Nemours Wildlife Foundation, Clemson University’s James C. Kennedy Waterfowl and Wetlands Conservation Center, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Our goal is to expand this study to multiple states in 2020 along the Atlantic Flyway from Delaware to Florida and into the lower Mississippi Flyway. If successful, this study could be a model for how other flyway level questions for waterfowl identified during a meeting of biologists in February 2018 at the Nemours Wildlife Foundation can be addressed through a unified public and private-sector collaboration.