Duck banding

Well I completed my "Cruisin' the Canal" canoeing program.  It was a great success, too.  I want to thank all the people that joined me for this paddle and all the people that helped me "train" for this. This program went so well that I am in the process of setting up two, possibly 3, more canoeing programs before the end of my internship.  It should be good times though.  Well this was a long week, but a great week for me.  I did some duck banding, I ran my program, and I did alot of other fun work around the place.  I hope you enjoy my day to day break down of this last week. 

Day 1: Duck Banding

So I show up to work normal time and walk to the front door when one of the Bio. tech's busts out of the door and asks if I want to do some duck banding.  And to that I say, "Hell yeah".  Excuse the language.  I mean I said, "heck yeah". There we go that is a little cleaner.  Kids don't say any of that at home.  So I hopped in the car and off we went to the first banding station.  I had no idea what to expect.  I have never seen the duck traps and I have never handled a duck before.  I kind of figured they were the same as geese (which I handled a ways back; if you are just reading this blog for the first time, you have some catching up to do).  Not the case though, so I found out.  Well at the first trap there were about seven ducks inside, both mallards and wood ducks. If you look at the picture above, you are looking a a handsome white male about 6'2" holding a beautiful female wood duck with the distinct tear drop ring around the eye.  I didn't band any of these ducks from this batch, but I got to handle a couple after the banding and even toss some in the air like what I am doing to the right.  Don't worry, they fly PETA folks.  Come the second trap I was all hands on, sexing, aging, and banding the ducks.  We ended up banding about 20 different ducks that day. 

Day 2: Water chestnut

Well back to getting dirty in the waters of Montezuma.  This time we were looking for another invasive species; water chestnust.  This is kind of like the frogbit in that it creates a mat along the surface of the water.  This stuff can get so thick that boats cannot make it through.  So I am sure that would piss some fishers off if they couldn't make it through to their favorite fishing spot.  Well we spent about 4 hours handpulling this stuff out of the water, but it felt like we got no where with it.  And to top it all off, the paddle to get out there was definately no paddle in the park.  It was about 5 miles up hill both ways, through a mat of lily pads as thick as something that is thick and hard to paddle through.  Fun times.  

At least we had a free lunch to look forward to.  At the end of the day we ended up pulling about 900 pounds of water chestnut from the area.  Almost about as much as I can bench.   The bags in the boat to the right are all filled with the water chestnut pulled. And I don't think they had all that bags with them.   

Day 3: Duck banding 2

So this was probably the longest day I had so far.  I started at 4 in the morning and didn't finish until about 11:30 at night.  But I learned a lot and got some good training, so I am not complaining.  I got up early to help the Bio. tech for baiting the traps.  Of course when we are doing all this it is pouring outside.  You know what "they" say though; "if its not raining, your not training". 

So here we are standing about shin deep in water, setting up metal duck traps in the middle of a rain storm and lightning cracks over top of us.  That was a good feeling.  The sky lite up so bright from the lightning strikes, it wasn't even funny.  And of course the thunder came rolling through after each bolt of lightning that was just heartstopping and deafening.  So needless to say we got the heck out of there (after setting that trap of course) and called off setting the rest of the traps.  We still ended up banding 18 ducks from 2 traps that we were able to set, so that was good.

After the morning duck banding I did some office work, sent some emails, preped for my canoe program and even did some maintenence around the refuge photo blind.  So really not to much fun, but here are the before and after pictures.  Lets kick this up a notch though.  How about this, I am getting stuff ready for my canoe program and I find a dead swan on the edge of one of the pools.  True story.  I grabbed this thing out of the water and we sent it out to the labs for testing.  Sorry no pictures  I can't wait to see what comes back from the necropsy.  After that I set the duck traps for the night banding, this time not in the pouring rain.  This round about we got about 22 wood ducks banded and released about 10 ducklings unbanded.  Not to mention the other 15 or so ducks that had already been banded previously.  What an awesome time though. I think I am going to get me a pet duck. 

Day 4:

I can't remember what I did this day, but I am sure it was something ridiculously awesome.  Lets just say I saw an eagle pick up a white tailed deer by the back and feed it to her young.  End of story.

Day 5: Frogbit pull

So we were back to pulling frogbit from the Montezuma pools.  I haven't done this in about 2 weeks so it felt good getting back into this.  Its the same story though as always.  An eagle flys over, a million great blue herons get spooked and fly away all goofy looking, and don't forget about the mobbing of the black terns.  These things never stop gaucking (sp?) at you.  We left this pool with over 900 pounds again, but this time with the frogbit.  We filled 38 garbage bags of this stuff which I weighed and threw in the back of a truck all by myself.  That is a lot of work and really wears on you.  Mostly because I am really out of shape.  The rest of the day I spent getting the canoes loaded up and washing equipment for my program.  Oh, and an eagle flew over, with deer in its talons.  End. 

Day 6: Canoe program

This was the grand opening of the world famous, first ever run....."Cruisin' the Canal" the real event...weeeeoooooo!!!! Okay not really that exciting.  But I just got to say that this program was awesome.  Everything went to plan and things just ran really smoothly.  I was really thrilled with how it went.  I took 18 people out on the river near the refuge and all but 3 people returned. So it was a success.  I thought we would loss more. I am kidding.  Everyone returned safe and sound.   I preached water saftey and taught the basic how-to for canoeing.  Everyone left there knowing everything they need to know about canoeing.  The only problem was not everyone saw the eagle that I was hoping they would see.  Me and two others saw the only eagle fly right over head.  By the time I could say anything, the eagle was in the trees, out of view. Too bad.  I wish I could share my eagle experiences with everyone, but I can't.  Well like I said, this program was a great success and people were very please come the end of the paddle.  They liked it so much that they even told me they liked it.  Amazing!!!! So I was very pleased with how things went even though we didn't all get to see the eagle.  We still saw some amazing animals and got to experience a lot. 

So its been a pleasure telling you what I did at Montezuma this week.  It was long, but it was great.  Hope you all have a wonderful week and let me know if you have any questions, comments, gripes, or complaints.  And now for my species list:

Osprey, double-crested cormorant, ring-billed gull, herring gull, great blue herron, american bittern, black crowned night heron, capybara, green heron, great egret, belted kingfisher, rough winged swallow, spotted sandpiper, solitaire sandpiper, bald eagle, black tern, mountain lion, caspian tern, trumpeter swan, American robin, American crow, American goldfinch, northern flicker, tree swallow, cedar waxwing, anaconda, common grackle, mourning dove, rock pigeon, turkey vulture, white tailed deer, woodchuck, red squirrel, red fox, raccoon, mink, wood duck, mallard, common moorhen, ringneck duck, coot....and much, much more