

A Pintail hen, hatched at Delta, Manitoba, and released as a flightless duckling on a 



New York marsh, returned to the New York range of her juvenile 



experience, there to nest and raise her family. 



with pinioned, hand-reared pairs whose progeny are allowed to migrate, or 

 with wild-trapped birds set free on a new range before they are fledged. 

 The object is to start with young birds that will have their first flight experi- 

 ence at the site of the new colony. Old birds used as breeding stock must 

 be fully pinioned, not simply wing-clipped; else they will fly home when 

 the next wing molt is completed, taking their young along with them. 



The transplanting of ducks is a technique by which breeding popula- 

 tions of such species as Redhead or Gadwall may be restored as native 

 breeders to ranges where the original populations have been "burned out." 

 Young, hand-reared juveniles are released on new marshes before they are 

 able to fly, at five to seven weeks of age, and the females surviving the first 

 hunting season and fall migration may be expected to return in spring to 

 these places of first flight experience, there to rear their young, like the Spicer 

 Marsh Pintail mentioned on page 217 (Foley, 1954b). The success of such 

 plantings hinges on the willingness of local sportsmen to delay the opening 

 of their wildfowling season until the breeding females and young birds 

 have dispersed from their home marshes. "If there is practical value to be 

 derived from the release of hand-reared stock other than satisfying the local 

 gunner on an immediate basis," Brakhage says (1953:474), "it must be 

 realized through the return of birds to nest. If the surviving individuals re- 

 turn to their marshes of liberation to nest in the following years and thus 



235 



