Going, Going, Gone?

Delta researcher-turned dairy farmer Gord Hammell details the stunning demise of bluebills in the Erickson, Manitoba area since he did his research there 40 years ago. Now retired, he's back doing scaup research.

By Rob Olson, President

The landscape around Erickson in southwestern Manitoba would appear beautiful to any- one, let alone a lover of ducks. Potholes large and small cover a rolling landscape made green by summer aspen stands scattered here and there. Having spent time here doing research myself, it was easy for me to understand why Gord Hammell, a Delta researcher from days gone by, couldn't leave in 1972. Truth be told, I was envious of him.

Fellow bluebill aficionado and Delta colleague Jim Fisher and I were on our way to fulfill a professional dream: to meet the man who completed his master's research on scaup and liked the area so much he made the unorthodox decision to stay and become a farmer. I suspect many of us that have done research in this landscape had fantasized about living there, one way or another. While heading west on dusty country backroads last sum- mer to meet Gord, we had no idea that one of the most interesting days of our professional careers was about to unfold.

Upon driving into Gord's lane, out came a man looking exactly as you'd expect: half dairy farmer, half biologist. A worn set of binoculars dangled from his neck, suggesting ornithologist, but his tattered, duct-taped straw hat screamed of a man who came to earn his living from milking cows. "Hey guys, how about some lemonade?", called Gord as he approached us to shake hands and exchange introductions.

We found a shady spot to sit, and Gord's story unfolded like the lawn chairs we settled into. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, he devel- oped a desire to study bluebills partly based on his experiences hunting these birds back near his family's cottage on Mississippi Lake, Ontario.

In 1969, the Ontario bluebill hunter headed to the famous Delta Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Station in the Delta Marsh of Manitoba. He spent his f irst summer working as a research assistant on catbirds at the Delta Marsh, but yearned to study bluebills. Consulting with Director Al Hochbaum, it became clear to Gord that Erickson was the place to go. "At the time, Erickson was one of the only places that was accessible – far enough south – to actually study scaup," Gord said, explaining why he chose to do his master's work on bluebills in 1970.

Thirty-six years later, in 2008, Gord traded his milking equipment for binoculars, retiring from his life- long job of being a dairy farmer and to take up his old research. Gord Hammell was back on the bluebill path.

"I never quit looking for the birds in all those years of farming," he told us. "I just didn't have time to get off the tractor, until now."

The answer may be partly found in north-central North Dakota, where Delta has been conducting research for the past 15 years.

North Dakota isn't historically known as a tremendous scaup breeding area, but we've witnessed remarkable production for the species there.

Why? We suspect the positive impact of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on the U.S. side of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) has been the main reason we've seen scaup doing well on our study sites. In addition to CRP, the USFWS' wetland conservation work has been very instrumental.

We are convinced that unusually and unnaturally high predation rates in and around Erickson as a result of the invasion of raccoons and the lack of nesting cover must be a significant driver of the decline of the local breeding population. To bring back the breeding bluebills of Erickson, we see only two viable options: a large-scale agricultural program like CRP in the Dakotas, through something like Alternative Land Use Services, and predator management.

We are currently testing the effectiveness of predator man- agement at two sites south and west of Erickson. In research conducted to this point, predator management in prairie Canada has not worked consistently, and we will be evaluating new methods for the next two years to see if trapping raccoons and other predators could make a difference for scaup and other ducks trying to nest in this hostile landscape.

–Rob Olson

While Jim and I wanted to meet Gord, we also wanted to see his study site, a famous area for scaup research, just a little west of his farm. And, of course, we are always keen to see our beloved 'bills in their courting-best plummage. "Pull over here," said Gord, " let's look at this wetland first."

After rolling down our windows, the first ducks we see are ringnecks - no coincidence as it turns out. "The number of scaup on this study area have declined sharply over the years, but the overall number of ducks is about the same. The number of ringers has increased dramatically since my research was done."

Glassing this typical Erickson wetland, a small puddle of water, ringed by cattail and sedge grass, the first of many lessons to come that day on scaup ecology began. "The scaup like to nest on the edge of the wetland, sometimes on dry ground, and sometimes over water. The ringnecks are usually over- water nesters."

Over-water nesting means just that: a nest platform, a mini-island, built up by the breeding ringnecks. It's a nesting strategy also employed by canvasbacks and redheads. A good strategy, so it seems. "I think the over-water-nesting ring-necked ducks do better than the scaup because nesting on the edge of the potholes, the bluebills have almost no chance, there are just too many predators running around the edge."

I told Gord about the dismal nest success we had been documenting near Minnedosa for many years for upland-nesting species like mallards and wondered aloud why any scaup nesting near a wetland would hatch. His answer: "they don't."

Seeing no bluebills, we continued down the road towards the core of the original study site of Gord's predecessor, John Rogers. Wetlands rolled by with numerous sightings of buffleheads. These tree-cavity nesters appear to be doing well, rising above it all as it were, in the relative safety of hollow aspen. We saw more ring-necks, but still no scaup.

Before Gord did his research in the early '70s, Rogers had first stud- ied the scaup of Erickson from 1957 to 1960. There were a lot more scaup nesting here back then. "Rogers did his work on a single section of land (640 acres, one square mile) and he had a high count of 60 pairs of bluebills per square mile back then", Hammell says. "By the time I got here, the density was already down to around 20 pairs per square mile."

Another Delta researcher, Lyle Sowls, documented raccoon tracks at Minnedosa in 1950, an area about 15 miles south. Gord thinks the rac- coons showed up further north around Erickson, just before he did. "Rogers didn't talk about seeing raccoons when he did his work here in the late '50s. The locals figure the raccoons showed up in the '60s, before I began my work."

Raccoons being wetland-oriented animals, it's not hard to imagine these newcomers would have taken a heavy toll on the scaup–clumsy, land-nesting diving ducks that often choose to lay eggs on the edge of potholes where coons make their living.
Gord signals us to pull over again, this time, he looks serious. "Let's get out and walk around a bit." Watching Gord hike purposefully across the hills of his study site, it's easy to see his passion for this place. He and his wife have made a life here and raised kids in the process, but his connection even goes beyond that. He cares about this land, and he cares about the scaup and other breeding birds here too. So much so, when his own observations showed that the bluebills were not doing well in this new landscape, he quit hunting them. Jim and I tell him we are too addicted to roast scaup to stop hunting them, but his hens are safe from us – well, from Jim anyway. In spite of the well-documented and long- term continental decline of bluebills, they are still one of the most abundant species of ducks. A lightly hunted and modestly harvested species, the mortality associated with hunting for this species is a whisper in a windstorm compared to what is happening to them due to predators here at Erickson and beyond.

We hike from pond to pond across the land, and see more ringnecks. Gord offers more theories on why the ringers may be doing better. Ringnecks prefer these wooded wet- lands. Thanks to the increase in beaver populations, these types of ponds are more common now. I think the smaller ringnecks can take flight easier, that might be why they like these wooded wetlands and it may help them get off the nest a little quicker than the scaup when a predator comes around."

Cresting a hill, looking down over the last wetland on our hike, we still find no scaup. The mood is turning from an easy-going adventure to one of determination. Finding a scaup on the study site has now become a mission, a feeling echoed by Gord.
"In the old days, we would have seen a pair of breeding scaup by now, but this isn't the old days. Let's look at one more good lake," he suggests, and with that we head to the last un-searched corner of the old study site, a series of potholes that marked the best piece of habitat for scaup and our last chance on this trip to look at some breeding 'bills.

Driving north on a section-line road, Gord points out the place where another Delta student and a now famous waterfowl researcher, Al Afton, lived when he did his work here in the late '70s. "Al lived over there. His work was really important because he collected baseline information before the scaup disappeared from here. Al really showed that it is the older females that carry production, they're just better at it than the young ones."

As we turn a corner and prepare to drive into a yard site, we pause to glass a wetland where I saw a pair of scaup the last time I was here with the now youngest Delta guy to work on the breeding scaup of Erickson, Dave Koons.

Another in a long line of passionate Minnesota scaup hunters turned scaup researchers, Koons did his research here in 1999 and 2000, but Gord recalls is wasn't easy for him. "I think Dave got quite a shock when he showed up here intending to study scaup. The local population was down to a couple pairs per square mile by that time. They had to work pretty hard to find enough nests."

Pulling into an abandoned yard site, Gord pointed out where the researcher that started it all, John Rogers, lived while doing his research here. Getting out of the truck near an abandoned house, we were greeted fittingly, by raccoon trails leading from the decaying house down to a large wetland, beyond the aging farm buildings.

As we walked down the hill, the sun was getting low in the west, creating a golden glow and a pleas- ant ending to our tour with this grand gentleman, in spite of the undeniable sadness within Jim and I about what has happened here to "our" birds.
We walked through an open-ended barn, dried raccoon feces crunching under our boots, with a beautiful, large prairie pothole stretching out before us. We all glassed this last wetland of the day, and if on cue, and as would be writ- ten by any playwright worth his salt, there at last, was a pair, a single pair, of scaup, swimming towards us. As the sun set on that day, and we said our goodbyes, we wondered if the sun had set on the scaup of Erickson.

Erickson, Manitoba:
Delta's Scaup Research Here Spans 7 Decades

Delta Waterfowl students have compiled a ground-breaking body of scaup research at Erickson, Manitoba that spans seven decades.

While the past work documented the basic ecology of this breeding population, and ultimately its decline, we hope future Delta students will discover the cures for what has been ailing these nesting bluebills.

The following is a brief summary of the Delta students studying the scaup of the Erickson region.

Dr. John Rogers
University of Missouri
1957 – 1960

Dr. Rogers documented, for the first time, how sensitive breeding scaup were to water conditions. When wetland conditions were very poor in 1959, the population decreased by 63 percent with only eight percent of the females nesting that year. Rogers found that scaup were very vulnerable to predation because they nest close to the edge of wetlands. Rogers had a 30-plus-year career with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, eventually becoming the acting director for a couple of years. He always championed the role of research for making wise management decisions.

Gord Hammell
University of Guelph
1970 – 1972

Gord was one of the first to look at the usage of varying types and sizes of wetlands by breeding scaup in pothole country. Gord found that breeding scaup chose relatively small wetlands for nesting, but later moved their broods to larger, more permanent wetlands. His conclusion was that scaup needed a variety of different types of wetlands to successfully reproduce.

Dr. Al Afton
University of North Dakota
1977 – 1981

Al's ground-breaking work was focused on the social behavior of scaup. He also documented that older scaup are more successful breeders. He showed that older females nested earlier, laid more eggs and enjoyed higher nest success. Importantly, Al's work determined that fat reserves were a key limiting factor to scaup reproduction. In the late 1990s one of Al's students, Dr. Mike Anteau, compared the lipid reserves of breeding scaup to Dr. Afton's findings and learned that scaup were arriving on the Erickson breeding grounds in poorer condition than in the late '70s. This line of research is continuing today, and could provide key clues as to why scaup are declining continentally.

Dr. Jane Austin
University of Missouri
1981 – 1982

Jane studied the post-breeding ecology of female lesser scaup, studying the factors that determine when and where scaup from the Erickson region molt their feathers. Dr. Austin has a long career working at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, in Jamestown, N.D., where she chairs the Scaup Action Group, which focuses on the continental decline of scaup.

Dr. Dave Koons
Montana State University
1999 – 2000

Plagued by low sample size due to the decline of the local breeding population at Erickson, Dave persevered to find that scaup hens and ducklings had very low survival in his study years (68 percent and 20 percent respectively). He found that scaup were initiating their nests one week later than Dr.Afton's findings and nest success was considerably lower. Dave found that ring-necked ducks hatch at a much higher rate than scaup (32 percent vs. 11 percent) and that ring-necks nest two weeks earlier and exclusively over water while scaup nest in the uplands 43 percent of the time. Dave is a professor at Utah State University.

Gord Hammell, Part 2
2008 - present

Only time will tell what Gord discovers the second time around. Early results, as yet unpublished, suggest his predation rates on scaup remain extremely high with low production continuing to plague the breeding bluebills of this region.