Fri Apr 29, 2022 6:33 am
Here’s the problem with the duck counts… The survey was designed in the late
1940s - early 50s and the “institution” is too proud to make any changes. They hide behind “changing the survey would basically be starting over and throwing away 70 years of a contiguous data set.”
In fairness… that amount of contiguous data collection is pretty much unheard of. They are so proud of it in fact, one biologist told me “In North America we know more about mallard populations than most third world countries know about their human population.”
Well the problem is North America doesn’t look much like it did in the 1950s therefore the assumptions in the data processing are even less accurate than they were back then.
We know that a drake mallard will hang out by the nest for a few days as incubation starts and then go hang out in bachelor groups before molt migrating. The study assumes that all groups of four or fewer drake mallards have a hen on the nest. Unfortunately we know that sex ratios in the population are even more skewed towards drakes today than they were 75 years ago. Therefore…. There’s too many drakes, not enough hens in reality, and the assumption that all those small groups of drakes have hens is wrong.
Also… how ridiculous is it to count a northward migrating species with a survey that goes south to north? Double count much? The survey crews post reports online. “Sitting in hotel waiting for open water. No ducks in area.” 3 days later “Ponds open, ducks everywhere” wash, rinse, repeat all the way from SoDak through Sask.