. ABSTRACT 
A wood duck banding program was initiated in the Mississippi 
Flyway in 1959, and renewed emphasis was placed on wood duck banding 
in the Atlantic Flyway. In 1960, cooperators in the United States 
and Canada banded 10,563 wood ducks, a 49 percent increase over 
the number banded in 1959. Uses and limitations of the data are 
discussed. Pre-hunting season banding provided the most data, but 
banded samples were too small and too poorly distributed to provide 
reliable information on population characteristics. The geographical 
distribution of recoveries from ducks banded in 1959-60 is reported. 
The data are examined for changes in recovery rates between years, 
for regional differences in recovery rates associated with the 
opening dates of the hunting season, and for differences in recovery 
rates between age groups. In order to indicate the possibilities 
for use of the data, rough approximations are made of the size, age 
composition, and harvest rate of the wood duck population in the 
Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways prior to the 1960-61 hunting season. 
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