California Waterfowl partners with Montna Farms on tracking project
A group of egg-salvaged mallards was released from Montna Farms in Sutter County recently, a few of which were outfitted with solar-powered transmitters that will track the waterfowl and collect data to better understand their movements.
The project is a partnership between the California Waterfowl Association, the California Rice Commission and Montna Farms.
Jason Coslovich, egg salvage program coordinator for California Waterfowl, said the transmitters will be able to track how fast the mallard is moving, its altitude and migratory patterns. It can also tell researchers if the duck is swimming, flying or sleeping.
“This is the first time anybody has ever
put a transmitter on a duckling, let alone an egg-salvaged duckling,” Coslovich said.
California Waterfowl partners on an egg salvage program where teams will go out into agricultural fields prior to harvest to find nests and collect eggs. Agricultural fields, like rice, provide some of the best habitat for birds, but nests can be destroyed when fields are disced, mowed or harvested.
The collected eggs are taken to a salvage hatchery, where teams incubate the eggs until they hatch and raise the ducklings until they are about five weeks old before releasing them into the wild.
“It’s a really nice program that helps us mitigate this wildlife/ ag interface, and it’s also a fantastic educational event,” said Holly
Heyser, communications director for California Waterfowl.
Heyser said the solarpowered transmitters will allow the team to continue tracking the bird until they die, as long as they are in a place where the sun hits the solar panel. The technology being used has been used before on other species of birds, Heyser said, and while tracking might appear to stop when the bird flies out of cellphone range, when they return they bring along with them a tremendous amount of information.
“It’s such a wonderful, noninvasive way to see what they do and get information about them,” Heyser said. “How they fare in farm country is important to us.”
The team released the ducklings on the Sutter County farm on June
24. Nicole Montna Van Vleck, president and CEO of Montna Farms, said about 7 million ducks and geese fly through the Sacramento Valley every year as part of the Pacific Flyway, and rice fields provide about 60 percent of the food ducks and geese rely on.
She said the family farm has been focused on ducks and conservation for decades, and as a result of that they’ve seen a noticeable increase in the population of ducks and geese on the property over the years.
“We do a lot of conservation work and we find it a very important piece of our business, as well as an important part of our values,” Van Vleck said. “We kind of live by the motto that my dad, (Al Montna), established, which is ‘What’s good for rice is good for ducks.’”