Orange Band: Alberta

You’re a Northern pintail!

You were banded at the Kitsim marshes, near Brooks, Alberta by a Ducks Unlimited Canada scientist.

Your parents arrived in Alberta in the early spring. After mating, your mother nested and laid seven eggs. Less than a day after you hatched, you followed your mom on a long walk to a small pond where there was plenty of water plants and invertebrates to eat. However, this pond dried up during the hot summer, just like many other small wetlands do naturally each year.

Lucky for you, pintail young grow quickly and you soon migrated south, where you could find plenty of food during the winter. You spend your winter in the rice fields of California.

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Fast Facts:

• eats water plants and invertebrates
• a dabbling duck that eats at water surface or by tipping up
• one of earliest ducks to nest in North America each spring
• males don’t quack but call with a high pitched whistle

During the past twenty years pintail numbers have dropped dramatically. Ducks Unlimited Canada scientists are working hard with others to find out why and ways to help the pintails to recover.