I shot this drake woodie on 12/28/16 in SE Idaho. It had this blue second leg band with a GPS looking module attached. I called the number on the blue band and found it was the personal cell number of the Nevada waterfowl biologist who banded the duck in March near Fallon Nevada. He explained that the module attached to the blue band is a new "geo locating" technology that actually measures the light intensity every hour of the day. He asked me to cut the zip strip and send him the module. He can connect the module to his computer, download the stored light intensity data, and his software can locate the longitude and latitude of the bird every day based on the light intensity measurements. How cool. He explained it is a $150 module. He banded 25 drake wood ducks in March and mine is the first call/return. He also banded 50 canvasbacks, and has received 3 back so far. The biologist will return the module to me with a new zip strip to put on my call lanyard with the band. He'll include the full report of the duck's location by day since March. He's very curious the migration pattern of these wood ducks as this is the first GPS or geo locating study ever done on wood ducks. So if you get lucky like I did and shoot one, please call the number and return the module so he gets the data. You'll get it back for your trophy on your lanyard.
That's really cool! Amazing what people are able to study with technology - changes in light? That's pretty cool.
Cool story! I wouldn't want that thing on my lanyard but I'd love to hear the whole story of the ducks movements. Did you ask him how long they can track the ducks movements?
Thanks for sharing. Would be cool to learn how it made it over there from Fallon. You have a pointing lab I assume? What breeder did you get your pup out of?
Cool bird ! I flagged Chris for you , I'm betting he knows who banded that bird , if it wasn't one of his bands. @Chris Nicolai
My current pointing lab is from Tiger Mountain in WA. Have also had a Snake River dog (ID) and a Black Forrest dog (CO). Current dog is just a year old, but has potential to be as good as my best- the Black Forest dog.
I helped band a bunch of wood ducks, canvasbacks, redheads and scaup with Chris last Friday. It was a really cool experience. Most of the wood ducks banded in Fallon either remain there, as long as there is open water, or go winter in the Central Valley of California. Some go north to Oregon and Idaho though.
Sorry guys, I missed this. Pointinglab, are you David? And you have a dog out of Snake River (Eli)? Wow, let alone shared bands, but we might have related dogs!
They are easier to keep track of where they come from if you are building their homes. Finished these yesterday.
