HERMON, Maine — When it comes to trapping wood ducks, wildlife biologist Kelsey Sullivan says there are only a couple of things to remember.
“The key is to go where you know there are wood ducks already,” he said. “And then put out a bunch of corn. Get them hooked on corn.” Places such as the oak-filled woods along Souadabscook Stream — the site of this season’s trap site — for example.
On a recent morning, Sullivan, the game bird biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, waded into the murky waters of the stream to check his trap and welcome a new flock of recruits to the long-running international research project.
Sullivan tended the trap, transferred 17 wood ducks into a large plastic crate and carried them back to his truck for processing.
During that process, each duck was examined to determine age and sex, and was fitted with a numbered aluminum leg band before being released to fly — and eat free corn — again.
Across the nation and into Canada, similar efforts are ongoing as hunting seasons approach. The goal? Capture ducks that will help biologists establish population and harvest estimates.
“This is an international effort [that has been going on since at least the late 1950s],” Sullivan said. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service out of Washington, D.C., maintains a database of all the banding records, and they issue the bands to us for free. [Biologists] get bandings of a couple hundred thousand birds a year across the country and in Canada.”
On this day, Sullivan is checking the Hermon trap for the second time. For two weeks leading up to setting the trap, he baited the site with the food he knew would be irresistible to the flock of birds that live in the stream.
Sullivan uses whole corn, which he said the wood ducks seem to prefer to cracked corn. And for birds that can gobble down an entire acorn with no problem, those corn kernels serve as the perfect bite-sized snack for ducks on the move.
After swimming into a fist-size opening in a large, wire trap, the ducks often find themselves unable to swim back out.
“They call it a clover leaf trap,” he said, referring to the assembly of wire fencing that rests in the shallows of the stream. “It’s the same concept as a lobster trap. There’s a funnel that [ducks] get into, and then they kind of mill around and have difficulty finding the way out because of the shape of the funnel.”
At the end of that trap is a wire catch box that looks nearly identical to a lobster trap, which the ducks retreat into as Sullivan approaches from the other side.
Then it’s a simple matter to pull a rope that closes the catch box’s door, capturing the ducks inside.
The ducks don’t seem to mind too much and only flutter their wings briefly as Sullivan transfers them to the holding crate.
“Most ducks are very docile when you handle them,” Sullivan said. “That’s ducks. With geese, they definitely fight back.”
After taking a box full of ducks and putting leg bands on all of them, making sure to clinch the bands down tight so that fishing line isn’t a hazard, Sullivan takes a few notes to record band numbers and other vital details. Then what?
One by one, he tosses the ducks aloft and watches them fly away. Then he waits. Eventually, weeks or months later, receives the data he’s been waiting for.
When a banded duck is shot by a hunter, that hunter passes the data along to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the results are used by biologists in management and planning projects.
“The banding records inform harvest rates, which in turn informs the regulations and what basically is allowed,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said that in any given year, about 12 percent of Maine’s wood ducks are taken by hunters. If that percentage rises precipitously, that would help biologists justify more stringent bag limits.
In 2008, the bag limit on wood ducks was raised from two to three, Sullivan said, after data indicated the population wouldn’t be harmed by increasing the limit.
But that doesn’t mean research ended that year.
“If we do something like [raise the limit], we’ve got to make sure that we monitor very closely to make sure that if harvest rate changes [we respond].”
Sullivan explained that because ducks are migratory, the federal government sets a maximum bag limit for them. States can decide their own bag limits for the birds but can not exceed the federal standard.
Sullivan knows plenty of about wood ducks and was happy to share his knowledge. Among those tidbits: Wood ducks are called “wood ducks” for a reason.
“Their feet are adapted to scale trees. They scramble up trees,” Sullivan explained. “They’re cavity nesters, so they’ll nest in a branch that’s dead that has a hole that has rotted out. They’ll land and then climb up into it.”
In order to do that, the wood ducks rely on their claws — tiny toenails that extend from the ends of their webbed feet.
Doubt it? Try to muckle onto a wood duck that wants to take to the air, and you’ll quickly learn that their feet have sharp edges.
Wood ducks were Sullivan’s targets in Hermon, but he said biologists recently completed trapping other species of ducks in Aroostook County.
“[We put on] 605 bands from the beginning of August until the first week of September,” he said.
Among those: 500 mallards, along with some black ducks and wood ducks.
And in addition to learning about duck populations, the annual banding project can turn up some pretty amazing results.
Those migratory ducks aren’t just short-hop travelers, you see. And wherever a hunter bags a bird and reports the band number, data are shared with biologists.
“Wood ducks? Florida [is the farthest a Maine-banded bird has been found],” Sullivan said. “And then as far west as Missouri.”
But wood ducks don’t stray as far afield as some other species.
“The blue-winged teal that have been banded in Maine have ended up in Venezuela and Argentina,” Sullivan said. “The furthest banded duck that I know of, that was banded in Maine, ended up in Portugal one year. … I think what happened was it was in its migratory flight south and a storm hit and it drifted off to sea and ended up in Portugal.”
