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Rian Dickson 
Richard H. G. Bonnycastle Fellowship in Wetland and Waterfowl Biology
Postbreeding ecology of White-winged Scoters and Surf Scoters in western North America: wing moult chronology, body mass variation and foraging behaviour.
The wing moult stage of the annual cycle of waterfowl is relatively understudied, including for sea ducks. Therefore, the potential for demographic or energetic constraints during wing moult that could subsequently influence dynamics of waterfowl populations is an important research topic.
This highly collaborative project tackles the ecology of wing moult by surf scoters and white-winged scoters at a continental scale, with study areas in southeast Alaska and the Salish Sea region of British Columbia and Washington. The primary objectives of Rian’s work are to determine the strategies scoters use to meet the energetic costs of wing moult, while balancing other potential constraints (predation, energy demands at other stages, etc). Rian and her crew accomplish this by capturing moulting scoters, measuring body mass variation and primary growth rates, deploying radio transmitters on a subset of captured birds, and monitoring radioed birds for foraging effort, movements, and survival. This is the first study of scoter moult in the Pacific and will result in important insights into the biology of wing moult and conservation opportunities during the moult stage.
