Trivia

According to a 1957 issue of Ducks Unlimited Quarterly, a trout tagged by Wyoming biologists and a merganser banded in th

Information on life span is collected every time a banded bird is reported to the Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. And the record ages for some duck species may surprise you.

A band placed on the leg of a pintail in Canada’s Northwest Territories was recovered from the stomach of an American alligator in Florida’s Orange Lake 13 months later.

Dr. Stan Chace of Alturas, California, seemingly defied all odds way back in the fall of 1962. Chace bagged a banded Canada goose in October, and shot another banded Canada in December. When he compared the bands, Chace found them to be consecutively numbered—the first 518-31661 and the second 518-31662. The birds were banded three years earlier at Goose Lake.

In the 1950s, biologists used retrievers to catch young mallards for banding on the nesting grounds in Canada.

Acquiring one bird band a season ranks right up there. But how about two, on consecutive shots, on the same day? That's what happened to Howard Ewart on November 23, 1996, when he shot a pair of mallard drakes (1007-31302) and (1337-79713) while hunting on the Big Horn River near Thermopolis, Wyoming. Also living a charmed existence was Jack Needles, who, on December 24, 1992, bagged a drake black duck (1287-82810) and a hen mallard (1287-82870) near Stone Harbor, New Jersey. The birds arrived as a pair.

Tom Kowa of Sacramento, California, shot a female Ross's goose in January 2000, and a neck-collared male in January 2002. Both birds were shot on Pond 6 at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, and both were banded by the same individual eight years apart.

Duck and goose bands have become collectibles. And perhaps none are more treasured than those originating from the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary in Kingsville, Ontario. The late Jack Miner founded the sanctuary in 1904 to provide a refuge for migratory birds. He banded his first wild duck in 1909 and in 1915 started banding Canada geese. That same year, Miner added a verse of Biblical scripture to his bands. By 1944, 50,000 wild ducks had been banded at the sanctuary, along with 40,000 Canada geese.

The tradition continues today. In 2005 alone, hunters from 23 states, Ontario and Saskatchewan reported harvesting waterfowl with Miner bands. By comparison, the U.S. government's bird banding program was initiated in 1920. Since then, more than 23 million birds have been tagged, making the federal bands much more common.