A woman whose husband shot the bird in a local swamp got in touch with Fish & Game in New Zealand to say they’d recovered the bird.  

“It wasn’t a one-off, it’s in fact the third time a bird has turned up in New Caledonia,” says Eastern Senior Fish & Game officer Matthew Mc Dougall. “Initially, we thought people were having us on.”

Every year thousands of mallards are banded by Fish & Game and hunters who shoot banded ducks are encouraged to send in the bands which provide data on age and sex ratios, and survival rates in addition to where birds have dispersed to.

The banding information that hunters send in provides some crucial data but isn’t looked at in isolation. “It’s just one of the tools we are using to help assess what different populations are doing.”

Fish & Game is again calling on hunters to return band details from birds they shoot, once the season gets underway.

 A close up view of a duck band, which hunters are asked to return to Fish & Game.

Central North Island Fish & Game officers are hopeful of a better game bird season this May, after thousands of mallards have been trapped and banded around the North Island.

The work is carried out in the Bay of Plenty and East Coast, and the Auckland and Waikato regions, areas which come under the strongest hunting pressure are normally trapped more intensively.

Matthew says so far this summer, more than 5000 birds have been banded.

“It appears that this year we’ve had a good breeding season which bodes well for hunters come the opening of the duck season on the first weekend in May.”  

Juvenile ducks make up a large part of the hunter’s bag and “if there are plenty around hunters tend to do well”.

Matthew says it is intriguing how often some birds have been recaptured as part of the banding programme. One bird first banded in Galatea nine years ago, has now been recaptured on three subsequent occasions. “It shows that being trapped and banded doesn’t put the birds off a free feed.”

The annual banding now in its 19^th year involves capturing the ducks in baited ‘crayfish-type’ traps which let them in, but not out again. Coded bands are attached to their legs before they are released. This provides information to compare with the previous breeding season, which helps in setting duck shooting limits.

Fish & Game uses banding to find out survival rates for juveniles and adults, males and females.

Recovery of a band also means the distance between the banding site and recovery site can be calculated, as can the time elapsed since banding - giving an indication on how long the bird lived for.

Staff from the Ministry for Primary Industries use the banding sessions as an opportunity to test the birds for diseases such as avian ‘flu.