Canary of the Prairie: Agricultural change and the Northern Pintail

By Dr. Karla Guyn

Summary

The radio signal booming through my headphones signalled that the pintail hen I had come to know as "208" was sitting motionless just south of wetland B20. I moved as gingerly as I possibly could with a tracking antenna in my hand, and the signal grew noticeably louder with each of my steps, until the hen exploded from the grass in front of me. My heart raced as I stopped in my tracks. Circling above me once and tipping her head from side to side to look me over, 208 was gone in a flash, seeking refuge in a nearby wetland.

The nest site vacated by 208 was pretty typical for a pintail. It was located in short, sparse vegetation, and similar to other pintail nests I had found in the grasslands of southern Alberta, placed in a small depression about 10 cm deep. Peering into the nest bowl, I discovered five greenish-tinged eggs, with a small amount of down lining the bowl. Checking the eggs, I determined that 208 had not yet begun to incubate. I expected her to lay two or three more eggs before she would begin. Re-covering the eggs with vegetation, I hoped the nest would successfully hatch, despite the odds that only about 1 in 10 pintail nests ever do. Pintails, unlike mallards, do not frequently renest if their nest is destroyed. Therefore, if 208 were to lose this nest, she likely would only attempt to nest once more this season before packing it in and waiting for next year.

Tracking radio-marked pintails on the southern Alberta landscape was part of a research study I did for my PhD thesis during 1994-1997. I had not intended to pursue a PhD, but while completing my Master's degree, I was presented with an opportunity by DUC's Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research to study pintails in southern Alberta. Being an aspiring waterfowl biologist from Calgary, I had always been enthralled with pintails. As a bird, they seemed glamorous, with their spectacular plumage, sleek lines, secretive ways and unabashed reverence from waterfowlers. But their population seemed to be in trouble, and there was very little research underway to find out why, so the pintail study offer was impossible to resist.

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