24/07/18 - Good year for ducks

Whilst working with the contractors creating the new wader scrapes recently at Bank Island, we came across a brood of Gadwall ducklings on the small pond. After rallying the troops four of the ducklings were located from the vegetation around the side of the pond, and with all four individuals being a good size for ringing they were fitted with metal BTO rings (allowing us to track their movements if they are to be caught/recovered elsewhere). The Gadwall population in the LDV has increased dramatically over recent decades, with up to 100 pairs thought to have been present throughout the valley this year during the breeding season, including good numbers of broods seen.

Very few Gadwall ducklings are ringed in the UK, however the seasonal water levels in the valley mean that we can occasionally ring broods present on the ditches and small pools around the site, allowing us to find out about the movements of ‘our’ locally bred British birds. Earlier in the year we heard about a duckling that was ringed here in 2012 - now present in breeding habitat in the Netherlands – showing the need for joined up international action for conserving our migratory waterfowl species. Thanks as always to our team for their efforts in helping us to carry out bird ringing activities on the reserve, we couldn’t do it all without them.

Following on from our Gadwall post, we’re also rather fond of another of our key duck species – the fantastic and brilliantly named Shoveler. Not only is it a great looking duck with a fabulous bill for filtering out all those prey items, but the valley holds nationally important breeding and wintering populations. The LDV is just about the only place in the UK where regular numbers of British bred ducklings are caught and ringed, providing valuable data to help our understanding of this population – where they go to, hunting pressure across their range, longevity and other information that can help conservation strategies. We’ve managed to catch and ring five ducklings so far this year, which unfortunately is much lower than normal. Previous recoveries of Shoveler ducklings have come from France in the autumn and Russia in the following breeding season. Hopefully we might hear about this one on his travels!