29 
WATERFOWL BREEDING GROUND SURVEY IN ALBERTA - 1950 
Allen G. Smith 
The 1950 Alberta waterfowl survey was conducted as a cooperative venture 
between the Dominion Wildlife Division, the Alberta Game Branch and the United States 
Fish and Wildlife Service. Its primary objectives were to evaluate the waterfowl 
breeding ground conditions of southern and central Alberta, to appraise the breeding 
population found there, and to atternpt to evaluate the production of this population in 
the light of the various environmental factors which affect these populations.: 
This is the fourth consecutive year that a ground survey of this type has been 
conducted in Alberta and the second year that an aerial survey has been made, How- 
ever, due to the fact that the first aerial work was done in 1948, the 1950 aerial data 
are not sufficiently comparable to those of two years ago to be wholly applicable. 
The 1950 survey was divided into three major types of activity; the aerial 
population and production studies, the ground population and production studies, and 
the banding activities. Aerial population trend appraisals were made from May 11 to 
May 27 by G. H. Jensen, U. S, Fish and Wildlife Service (pilot) and Joseph Gau, 
Alberta Game Branch (observer). Aerial production flights were made by the same 
men from July 11 until July 25. Ground population trend appraisals were made by 
G. Alan West, Dominion Wildlife Division, Roy C. Anderson and Joseph Gau, Alberta 
Game Branch, and the writer. Production studies by the ground crew were made from 
July 1 until July 28, with the exception of the period from July 8 to July 16, when the 
ground and air crews combined operations for banding. Aerial transects were flown 
twice and ground transects were run three times during the course of the summer. 
* In addition to the personnel mentioned above, we were fortunate again to 
secure the services of many of the Forest Rangers of the Northern Alberta Forest 
Districts. These men furnished a considerable amount of climatological and migration 
data which was very helpful in appraising the early aspects of the 1950 waterfowl 
migrations in northern Alberta. 
Survey Methods 
Ground and aerial transects were run throughout the southern and central 
portions of Alberta in all soil and vegetative types. This study area represents 
approximately 65,000 square miles. Ground transects were run in the same manner 
as in 1947, 1948, and 1949, as described in the reports of those years. Aerial 
transects were run in the same manner as in 1948 (waterfowl counts on strips 1/8th 
mile in width each side of the plane, which was flown at an altitude of from 150 to 200 
feet), However, many of those transects flown in 1948 were abandoned or relocated 
this year and new ones were added, which adjustments made for a better aerial cover- 
age than was possible in 1948. In that year, many flights were of a more or less 
exploratory nature. 
Fifty flight hours were utilized to make the aerial population trend survey, 
comprising a sample of 739 square miles, Five hundred and seventy-five square miles 
of ground transects were completed, making a grand total of 1,314 square miles, or 
an approximate 2 percent sample of the waterfowl habitats of southern and central 
‘Alberta. 
Drought severely hampered our ability'to secure complete nest histories. 
Early disappearance of water, which was present in the south when the mallards and 
pintails began to nest, created a large area in that region from which nest data is 
