Editor's note: This week's feature article was submitted by Birding Wire friend and associate, Craig Springer, an outdoor writer and biologist whose day job finds him in the Albuquerque, NM office of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service. - JRA

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The redhead duck is arguably among the handsomest of waterfowl. That is of course a matter of opinion. But here's a fact: eighty percent of all North American redhead ducks spend their winters concentrated along the lower Gulf Coast of Texas in the Laguna Madre. The birds have an affinity for, if not an obligation to, freshwaters situated near salty shores. They feed on shoalgrass in the Laguna and fly inland to purge excess salts. Redheads, like most birds that feed in saltwater have a salt gland near the eye that excretes excess salts ingested while feeding. It is essential that salt be purged daily in freshwater ponds. And knowing the array of habitats frequented by the bird during south Texas winter sojourns is essential for Dan Collins.

He's as much a geographer as he is a wildlife biologist. For Collins, a scientist in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Division of Migratory Birds in Albuquerque, New Mexico, avian fauna are his forte. With research into redhead ducks in south Texas, he is waist-deep in remote-sensing—using photovoltaic cells, satellites, GPS, and Doppler radar to find and follow the position of ducks. The technology lends an amazing advantage in learning how birds behave and how wildlife managers can make better informed decisions at fine scales.

For Collins, who has earned three degrees in wildlife management and biology, culminating in a Ph.D. from Stephen F. Austin University in east Texas, birds are a way of life. He studies them and he hunts them—turkey, waterfowl and upland. A stringer of northern shoveler, green-wing and blue-wing teal are preserved in a beautiful taxidermy mount on his office wall from a memorable hunt years ago. Five steps away two computer monitors sport spreadsheets and maps with real-time satellite imagery—all duck data.

To the uninitiated the map is a meager representation of the tip of Texas with blue dots scattered about. Others dots concentrate in clusters. The dots tell a story and inform the future. It's the dots, superimposed with data from the ground, waterfowl habitat types: freshwater lagoons, salt marshes and fields—some studded with wind-energy turbines—that tell the tale. Each dot represents a redhead duck caught in a moment in time unknowingly sending a signal into the ethereal black of space to a satellite. The satellite relays the information back to the ground for Collins and collaborating researchers at Texas A&M University – Kingsville, Dr. Bart Ballard and Corey Lange, to see. It's the time and space in between each data point that reveals what ducks do on their winter grounds.

Tiny photo cells charge the small transmitters attached to ducks. They need four hours of sunlight per week to operate effectively. The tags emit signals very much like the GPS function on a smart phone, except these tags have to endure the rigors of flight and the pressure of water given that redhead ducks dive to find food. Each tag isn't cheap – about $3,700 apiece – so birds are not tagged en masse, but the quality of the information is worth the expense.

Having virtually followed redheads for a season, the data shows the birds have an aversion to turbines.

"We've documented turbine avoidance," said Collins, speaking to presence of wind farms near redhead habitats. "It's good they don't fly into them, but there's more to it. The turbines affect habitat use, they seem to displace birds, and that could lead to birds to leaving wintering habitat in poorer condition."

Redhead ducks heading to summer breeding grounds in Canada, the Dakotas and Montana, arriving there less fit could make the bird less successful on the nest. That remains an unknown. Only large males were tagged in this present research, said Collins—birds that could physically handle the tags.

"New, smaller tags are coming online that should allow us to tag more birds," Collins says. With more data from more birds, females included, the picture of habitat use should become clearer. With what's been acquired via remote-sensing thus far, wildlife managers are better equipped—much more informed—to steer waterfowl conservation and seek answers to new questions. This much is clear already: "The data revealed what areas are important for conservation outside of the wind farms," said Collins, "and where best to engage our partners—where habitat enhancement and restoration would be most beneficial for the birds going forward."

Se www.fws.gov/southwest/migratorybirds for more information.