Species: Mallard
Most recent capture date: 4/02/2022
Age: more than one year old
Sex: female
Notes: This was quite the surprise! Ducks do like to hang out at the banding station, but they are usually too big to end up in our nets. In fact, we believe this is the first time a Mallard has been caught in one of our nets! We can’t band ducks – the permits for banding game birds are different from those for other birds – so we just took some data on her plumage and sent her on her indignant way. The size of the iridescent blue patch on her wing told us that she was hatched earlier than 2021.