“High, right,” your partner says and you glance up in time to see a pair of mallards cupped and gliding into the decoys. “Take ’em,” comes the next instruction and you rise in unison. Shotguns blast and a single mallard drake plummets from the sky and lands with a splash. On command the dog launches from the blind and swims back with your prize.

You marvel at its iridescent green head, chestnut breast and the subtle vermiculations on its wing coverts. Turning it over you’re treated to a surprise – jewelry.The silver numbered band makes this bird particularly special, a rare trophy for any waterfowler. It also represents an important part of an involved process designed to ensure our continent’s waterfowl populations remain healthy.

That process goes on almost year-round but we’ll start our annual calendar in May. As soon as ice goes out on the breeding grounds and the ducks return, so do pilot-biologists who fly survey transects. Every pilot will ultimately fly some 3,000 miles of transects, each 150 miles long and a quarter-mile wide, and segregated into similar habitat types. They’ll enter all waterfowl observations into an aerial onboard digital recording system. At the same time, other biologists on the ground will census waterfowl and record habitat conditions.

When the survey is done, pilots and ground staff will tabulate data. Others will take to the field to band. Some birds are caught on the nest while others are lured into baited traps. The big push on the breeding grounds takes place toward the end of the nesting season when birds are molting their flight feathers and can be more easily herded into traps. In any case, biologists identify each bird to species and sex, then affix an individually numbered leg band. Some birds also receive auxiliary markers like neck collars, and a few even get transmitters so biologists can more closely track their movement.

Meanwhile the pilot-biologists return to the breeding grounds to conduct the July Duck Production Survey. They fly portions of their May transects to count broods while biologists on the ground do likewise. From this they derive a measure of duck production, timing of nesting chronology and an assessment of water body abundance. When combined with results from the spring flights, biologists are able to forecast the fall flight and set hunting season frameworks. But the job doesn’t end there.

Much of the aforementioned work occurs in the prairie pothole region – the continent’s duck factory. Waterfowl nesting in the more inaccessible high Arctic areas may not get counted in the spring breeding and summer brood surveys. Instead pilot-biologists conduct a nationwide midwinter survey on the wintering grounds. This information is then added into the equation for the following year’s assessment.

In the interim there’s hunting season. Each year a lucky few waterfowlers will harvest a banded bird. Those silver bands are a trophy indeed, but the real reward comes in the form of a certificate of appreciation they’ll receive after reporting it to the Bird Banding Laboratory. Waterfowlers know how vital their reports are in helping biologists track migration patterns and populations of the species they pursue, and ensuring those populations remain viable.

Bob Humphrey is a freelance writer and registered Maine guide who lives in Pownal. He can be reached at:

bhunt@maine.rr.com