by At the beginning of a science experiment, there is a strong chance that everything will go wrong.
Say nearly 200 ducks are tagged with tracking devices and then bird flu wipes them out, for example.
That may have had a group of scientists nervous in 2021 and 2022, when there was an outbreak killing countless birds across North America.
Hundreds of research dollars from Canada and the United States were riding on the fate of eider ducks along the east coast, and although survival rates were lower at first, they have picked up again.
Today, more than 180 birds remain tagged.
“It’s really nice when these things work out,” said Dr. Mark Mallory, a scientist from Acadia University who has been studying eider ducks for more than 20 years.
Professor Mark Mallory, Canada Research Chair at Acadia University, has been studying eider ducks for over 20 years. (Submitted by Mark Mallory)
Mallory is one of many people on both sides of the border trying to understand more about the American common eider, a subspecies of the eider duck.
On the surface, the population appears to be declining in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Maine, but picking up in other areas, such as Newfoundland and Labrador. Even numbers from the Christmas Bird Count, a citizen science project that has been running since 1990, show a softer decline in the middle part of their range.
And maybe it’s a decline that’s happening. Or, as Mallory told CBC News, the ducks could be redistributing, changing their migration patterns. Female eiders could be skipping the breeding season, but without sitting on a boat and stalking the colonies, researchers couldn’t say for sure what was happening.
Until now. The project is three years in the making, with partners including the Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Maine Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine and Acadia University.
Researchers from the Institute for Biodiversity Research in Maine are part of an effort to find out why the number of eider ducks is declining in some areas in Canada and the USA. They have tagged ducks in Quebec and Maine, as well like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. (Submitted by Chris Ingram)
That researchers are in the “grinding stage,” said Mallory.
What they have already confirmed is that the ducks are popular on Cape Cod. Almost all of the eiders are tracked over the winter on the Massachusetts peninsula, Mallory said, making it a critical marine area.
“That one we have, we just have to write that,” Mallory said. “That’s beautiful and convincing.”
But there are still more questions, and it will take the best part of 2024 to find answers, especially for the part of the project that investigates breeding bias, or the tendency to breed.
“We know the birds sometimes skip but what we had to worry about is are birds coming back and looking and not nesting for reasons we’re not too sure about?” Mallory asked.
The island vibe may just be, well, off.
“These birds are hardwired to come back, but they are not idiots,” said Mallory. If there is human activity, he said, or if the island is crawling with predators, perhaps seagulls or mink, the ducks, sensing risk, may stop nesting until it is too late. – late to breed.
“Who knows what goes on in an eider’s head?” he asked.
A mystery
Whatever the data shows, it’s all exciting for Mallory. New answers may mean new questions: if eider ducks are staying further north instead of nesting in their usual places, then why? If they are choosing not to breed, what are the reasons?
“In a weird way, it’s even cooler if we find out they’re breeding,” Mallory said. “Because it’s like, okay, the birds are still coming back to breed, but the numbers are going down in this area, so something is happening to the birds.”
Asha Grewal, a master’s student at Acadia, who is responsible for going through the data on female eider ducks, said if they are not breeding, there are several possible explanations.
They have a lot of eggs – four or five, she said – and that can be quite productive for them, meaning they don’t necessarily have to breed every year. Or perhaps the ducks did not get enough food during the winter, leaving their bodies too weak for an extended nesting period.
The common eider may be choosing not to breed, and data will help researchers find out why over the next few years. (Submitted by Mark Mallory)
“It’s putting themselves first, before reproduction and putting their resources into chickens,” Grewal said.
That brings physiology, or the study of how the body functions, into the framework, which Mallory said will play a larger role in research next year.
Researchers have also received additional funding to tag more birds on the northern shores of Quebec and possibly Rhode Island and northern Labrador.
That means nearly their entire range will be covered, Mallory said, and by this time next year, researchers will have more answers about what’s going on.
