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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Mike Brasher: Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm again here on location to do another one of these episodes up in Warsaw, Illinois. I appreciate everyone joining back in to the podcast and I think you're going to enjoy this episode. We're going to be talking about SCOP. We're going to be talking about capturing and banding SCOP and a couple of topics that we'll cover with the guests that I have here sitting with me. One is a return guest from back in 2020. She first appeared and talked about some of her research at that time, and we've got an update and sort of a continuation. So, I'm really excited to welcome in Cheyenne Beach, PhD candidate at Northern Illinois University. Cheyenne, welcome back. Thanks for having me, Mike. And then also we have Jack Johnson, not the musician, right?
Jack Johnson: Yeah, right. It's great to have you here as well. Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much.
Mike Brasher: And we're going to give each of you an opportunity to, Cheyenne in your case, reintroduce yourself to folks and then Jack will come to you here in a moment. So Cheyenne, tell us, tell our folks about yourself.
Cheyenne Beach: Hi everybody. So my name is Cheyenne Beach. I am originally from Central New York. I'm sorry, I grew up around Syracuse, Utica region, if anyone knows that. Um, and I went to SUNY Morrisville, so a state university of New York school, um, in Morrisville, New York, and I got a degree in natural resource conservation. Um, I just really wanted to work outside. And during my time there, I also did a bunch of internships during the summers, um, started out in New York. working on some local lakes there with invasive species. That wasn't a foreshadowing of what the rest of my career was going to be like, but I guess it was. And then I started getting into bird work. So I started traveling around the country after that. During my summers for internships, I landed in Virginia on Chincoteague Island as one of my first seasonal technician jobs working with invasive species, but also got to work with piping plovers. And after that, I loved piping plovers and I went to North Dakota to work with them. And then after that, I was hooked on ducks. I mean, North Dakota might do that to people.
Mike Brasher: So after that I worked… It probably takes you one direction or the other.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, exactly.
Mike Brasher: I'm tired of these ducks or I love them and I want more.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, there's just so many. So after that I worked for Ducks Unlimited up there. I was working on their oil and gas project, doing pair counts and brood counts. And then I went to California and Arizona working for a little bit with some ducks during the winter. And then I landed at Forbes in 2017. Ducks in Arizona. Back up, back up. Back up, back up, back up. That's crazy. Yeah. So I was on Lake Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, which is right on the California, Arizona border. And it's fascinating to be in basically an oasis in the middle of the desert. And so, you know, all these waterfowl species are there. Every single one of them are there. The first time I ever saw a cinnamon teal. Fascinating. Gorgeous boats. Fascinating. But yeah, it was really surreal to be a person from New York, person from the Northeast, used to like rolling hills, woodlands, and then being like smack dab in the middle of the desert with the Colorado River, your only source of water, which is just bananas to me.
Mike Brasher: And then you went to where?
Cheyenne Beach: But then I went to Forbes. So, grand entrance to Forbes for the rest of my life.
Mike Brasher: Forbes Biological Station, the same one that we just spoke with Ariel and Josh and Theron about. Yeah.
Cheyenne Beach: So, the same one. The same exact one. Yeah. So, in 2017, I started at Forbes Biological Station as a technician working on all sorts of different projects. A few months after that, some master's positions opened up at Western Illinois University, and they were associated with Forbes. And so a bunch of Forbes staff there, Aaron Yetter, Joe Lancaster, Chris Hine, they all really pushed me to take this master's position. And so I did, and that was working with lesser scop and some trematode species that we're going to talk about. And those were captive infection trials. So we would catch wild birds, bring them into captivity and run them through these infection trials so we could understand their response to these trematode infections, especially at sublethal levels. And kind of the rest is history after that. I did my master's with them. Ariel, our director, she became my advisor at the end of my master's. She said, if I wanted to do a PhD, I could. And I said, sure, that'd be great. We put together a proposal and the DNR, the Illinois DNR liked it, wanted to keep going with this scop-trematoid research. And so they funded my PhD. And here we are now. And here you are now.
Mike Brasher: And we're going to come back to a lot of that here in a minute. The episode that you were on earlier, if folks want to go back and listen to that, you have to go back a few years. Episode 148 back in October of 2020, if what I checked just a few minutes ago was correct. So, yeah, you can go back and listen to that. This is a really cool continuation conversation of four years apart or three and a half, however many, whatever the math works out to be. First opportunity we've had to do that, so I'm excited about that. Jack, you are a research technician here with Cheyenne, and so tell us about your background and how you came to be here helping out.
Jack Johnson: I'm originally from central Pennsylvania. I went to a school not far from my hometown of Alexandria, and my school was Juniata College in Huntington, Pennsylvania. There I studied environmental science, and I had a few wildlife tech positions, research positions, while I was there in undergrad. A lot of that was dealing with mammals, water quality, fisheries and inverts, Allegheny wood rats. Did a good bit of research on those guys. And then right out of undergrad, I got a position as a resource technician at a conservation district in Huntington as well. And then shortly thereafter that, after graduation, I came out to Forbes for my first time, and that was September of last year. And there I worked on some ARU projects, quantifying gunshots and hunting disturbance across the IRV, and then got the offer to come out with Cheyenne here last year and run the pool 19 banding operation with her. Went back to the East Coast in Pennsylvania, where I worked at another conservation district, doing some more ag-related stuff, more water quality. And then I again got the call to come back out this year. So I'm a technician at Forbes Biological Station currently, and the co-coordinator for the pool 19 banding operation again. And then after this, I will be heading with Cheyenne up the Mississippi River Valley to continue some of her PhD research.
Mike Brasher: Awesome. So, you, is this your second, we're here in March, in spring, is this your second spring here?
Jack Johnson: Second spring.
Mike Brasher: Okay, so your first time at Forbes would have been fall of 22? Correct, yes. Okay, all right. I think I heard last fall, which would have been 23, but… Gotcha, yeah, so 22, yeah. Okay, so, yeah, this is your second time, second year here at Pool 19 with the banding operation, and All right, well cool. Do we know what lies beyond just the immediate future?
Jack Johnson: Can you share any information? Definitely pursuing the experience that I need to continue on. I'd like to get my master's degree. So I'm looking at a couple different labs, hopefully the East Coast, but I'm looking everywhere as well. But definitely not straying away from waterfowl again.
Mike Brasher: Were you, were you, have you always been drawn to waterfowl or was your exposure to waterfowl, your experience at Forbes sort of the first real research exposure?
Jack Johnson: So I did have some waterfowl research experience in undergrad, a few independent studies and working with some of the professors there as well with GIS and banding recovery data. However, my passion for waterfowl stemmed from hunting. Growing up in a hunting culture and hunting those ducks that I've learned to love both for hunting and research now. So it's a cool thing to be hooked on to.
Mike Brasher: It is. I can share that. I can relate. Okay, we're here and my first time coming up to the famous, I think it's fair to say, famous pool 19. It certainly is famous within our community, within the waterfowl hunting community as well. I say our community, sort of the waterfowl science and research community. But the hunting community as well and long history here and this has been a really neat opportunity for me to get in the water, get my hands on some birds, look at some of the foods, the remains of the foods, you know, the shells washed up on the shoreline that are so abundant in Pool 19 and help determine why it's so important for a lot of these diving ducks. I've learned a lot just in the three days that I've been here, but we're here because of the importance of this area for a SCOP banding program. Before we get to that, I think it's probably appropriate for people that may not be familiar with where we are, what pool 19 is. Cheyenne, do you want to give that overview? What's the significance? What is Pool 19? What's its significance?
Cheyenne Beach: For sure, great question. So I'll Bob Ross paint you a picture of Pool 19. So Pool 19 is a really long portion of the Mississippi River. First I guess I'll back up and let people know that if you don't already know, the Mississippi River used to be just a free-flowing river. But then humans came in and started damming up the river. Some of those dams are for power sources, but most of them are for controlling navigation so that they can have barge traffic up and down the Mississippi River. Now we have pools. The Mississippi River is no longer just a continuous river flowing. It has several lock and dam systems and those lock and dams now serve as designation spots for quote unquote pools. And so we're on pool 19 of the Mississippi River that spans from Keokuk, Iowa, so that's southern half, all the way up to Fort Madison, Iowa. I don't remember how many miles that is.
Jack Johnson: I believe it's 50. Don't quote me on that. I think so too. I think it's around 50 miles long.
Mike Brasher: So we would not have seen that dam yesterday whenever we drove up past Nauvoo. We saw something north of Nauvoo and I said that kind of looks like a dam but I don't really know where it is. And so it's way on up there. And so these things, the pools are numbered. They start at one. It starts at one and it comes all the way down. What's the farthest south? Oh my gosh, I don't even know. Oh, I said I wasn't going to ask you a question.
Cheyenne Beach: Oh my gosh, Mike's asking us questions that we don't know the answers to. I'm not an Army Corps engineer.
Jack Johnson: What does it go to? 20… 20… I don't have my phone on.
Cheyenne Beach: It ends at some point down in the Delta region.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, because then water levels become high enough or consistent enough that they don't have to have the river dam to enable water levels for sure.
Cheyenne Beach: But up here in the upper Mississippi River, yeah, we have several lock and dam systems. And yeah, it starts around Minneapolis, Minnesota, the lock and dam system. And honestly, Pool 19, does it stretch up to Burlington, Illinois? I believe so. Or Burlington, Iowa? So sorry, Iowans. I don't mean to claim Burlington for you. I believe it goes up to Burlington. So I think it's from Keokuk, Iowa to Burlington, Iowa.
Jack Johnson: Right. Or Warsaw, Illinois, up to what is… Oh my gosh, don't even ask me the Illinois side.
Cheyenne Beach: There's teeny tiny towns over there. So anyways, Pool 19. It's a really, really long pool. It's one of the longest ones. And it is pretty windy on the Iowa side. There's a lot of bluff systems on the Illinois side. There's kind of bluffs, kind of not bluffs. It's a little bit more shallow on the Illinois side, but it's still quite a natural system because the whole pool system, the distance that the lock and dams are apart, It's fairly large. The water regime can still kind of operate somewhat normally. It hasn't been turned into like a pure reservoir system type deal. And so we still have quite a bit of current movement and we still have fairly little sediment deposition. We don't have a whole lot of siltation happening in this pool. It still happens, obviously, but not as much as other pools. And because of that, because it's kind of acts a little bit more natural, we have natural vegetation and natural macro and micro invert activity. And so there's quite a bit of food in this pool. If you see the pool in the summer, you've got lotus beds everywhere. There's some submerged aquatic vegetation on pool 19. And this all depends on water levels as well. If we get really high flood years and the pool is at a flooded level for a long period of time, we don't have great food availability. But if we have pretty low water levels throughout the year, we can have good growth on our vegetation, good growth on our submerged aquatics. then we've got really good food available for birds. So it really depends on the water regime, how much water we get in terms of precipitation or snow melt, things like that. And that kind of determines the condition of the pool in terms of food available.
Mike Brasher: I was doing some quick Google searching here and I found pools down to St. Louis, Pool 26. I don't think they're any south of St. Louis. But yeah, that's my story right now. So that's great information there about the importance of Pool 19 for producing all that food. What do you know about some of the importance of the other pools? They also produce food for waterfowl. Are there others that are as famous, well-known as Pool 19?
Cheyenne Beach: Not necessarily and that's mostly because Pool 19 is so big. So it's such a large area. It can hold a lot of birds and it has a lot of food available in it. But there's other pools like pool 13, that'll hold some birds as well. Seven and eight, that'll hold birds as well. But we're talking about in terms of compared to pool 19, they're not big enough. They don't have as much area or food available to really hold the substantial amount of birds that pool 19 can hold. I think there was an aerial count from Forbes Biological Station. I think it was like in the early 2000s that there was like 300,000 scop counted on Pool 19. That's a lot of birds. That's just like one species of bird.
Mike Brasher: We went out three nights ago when we first got here and granted we were looking into the sunset so the visibility wasn't great. I was blown away at the number of scop, divers, redheads, cans, ringnecks, and scop that we saw. I had no idea exactly what to expect. I did not do a whole lot of sort of research on my own before coming up here to know what it looked like, numbers of birds, anything of that nature. I'm sure I've come across those statistics and descriptions in the past, but I've never really studied diving ducks much. the details of some of these things have been, have eluded me, or at least I have not really pursued them. And so it was, yeah, being in this profession for a couple of decades now, to still go to places and see things that you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know this existed. I had no idea that there were this many birds here, that it looked like this, or that this is why it's so important. And it's really cool, personally, to be able to have that experience here with you all.
Cheyenne Beach: I mean even for us like even on days where we're like not clicking or stressed out or something like and we still go out and see the pool and we're like oh my god yeah that is so many birds. It takes your mind off a lot.
Mike Brasher: We went up yesterday I guess we were trying to find this big raft of birds and we think it stretched what a couple miles?
Jack Johnson: Yeah I'd say two miles above Montrose there.
Mike Brasher: And so, there's birds on Pool 19 north of there as well, or are most of them going to be concentrating, or is it the entire stretch?
Jack Johnson: So, we do kind of see a separation of species up toward the islands above Montrose, up towards Burlington. There's more islands. It's less the lack of sinuosity up there. The birds that stay up there are going to be golden eyes, buffleheads, and then down lower is where we see larger concentrations of their target species. Lesser scop, but also the canvasback, the redheads, and the ringnecks as well.
Mike Brasher: Talk about why this pool, what are they eating? What are the scop and let's say cans, redheads, some of these other divers, what are they eating? Why is this pool so valuable? You've mentioned a little bit of it.
Cheyenne Beach: All sorts of stuff, but mostly they're going to be your micro, macro invertebrates. So, scop obviously love amphipods. Maybe that's not obvious to everybody. Spoiler alert, scops love amphipods. And so there's right now would be like the amphipod hatch would be happening. And so there'd be an influx of amphipods happening now. And so we've got amphipods out there, but we've also got a bunch of different like snail species, clam species. We've got fingernail clams. I'm sure there is some eelgrass around that is important for a canvasback. Scientific name is Aethea valsinaria. And that is the same as the scientific name, not the same, but the species name. Valisneria. Yeah, Valisneria, that's for eelgrass. So they're literally named after eelgrass. Valisneria americana, is that it? I think so, yeah. And so they eat the tubers of eelgrass and so I'm sure they're finding tubers of eelgrass out there. But yeah, so they're eating all sorts of clams, snails. We've even, this year, been really fortunate to be able to feel some clams in some of the scop canvasbacks in their esophagus, which is really, really, really unique. We usually don't get to feel that. That's pretty crazy, but they just ate some clams and so they're processing them.
Mike Brasher: Let's transition to the work that you're doing here, the banding work. So tell us, you give this summary daily for probably two or three months consecutive, you know, in terms of why we're doing this. So tell us, why are we banding SCOP? Why are we targeting SCOP here at Pool 19? How long has it been going? Who started it? All that good stuff.
Cheyenne Beach: I'll start it off and then you can jump in whenever. So Dr. Al Afton out of Louisiana State University in the early 2000s started this banding operation and that was because we want to know more about Lesher-Scott population dynamics. We want to know more about that because Lesser scop have been declining since the 1970s, and we don't really understand why. It's been thrown around the fact that we've lost a lot of wetland habitat. The wetland habitat that we have left on the landscape is degradated, so it's not as good as it used to be, not as high quality. That also means that we have a variable amount of food available, especially during spring migration. I mentioned before about floods happening. There's a lot more floods happening at a more frequent rate as of the last decade than before. So the rivers have become much flashier and that's not really great for trying to grow food in a river. And so with all of that variability, that means that there's not necessarily always food available. And that's kind of a problem when you're trying to depend on these areas for food. So we're still trying to figure out what's happening with scop because we don't really know yet. And that's kind of where my PhD work or my master's and PhD work comes into play. For the last, I don't know, decade or so, we've been trying to figure out how episodic diseases play into scop population dynamics. But the banding operation is really just for us to understand more about population dynamics for these birds.
Mike Brasher: Survival rates, even harvest rates and things of that nature.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, we can simply put a band on a bird, release it back into the wild, and then when it's encountered next, we can figure out where it's going, when it went there, how old it was, for how long, all that kind of stuff.
Mike Brasher: This program is a bit unique from most of the other banding programs, projects, efforts that are out there. Most of the others that we think about and that our audience would be familiar with occur during late summer, known as sort of pre-season banding. There have been in the past and there's a resurgence now of banding that is occurring in winter months and winter locations, but this one, even before that resurgence of some of those other winter banding efforts, this one was, it sort of stood out and I guess it still does. Most of the other winter banding has already been completed unless it's associated with some type of research project. but we're here mid-March and most, there's not a whole lot of banding going on, but right now you're just cranking up in terms of banding. Why is that? Tell our folks why it's, why are we doing things different in terms of banding for lesser scalp than we do for some of the others.
Cheyenne Beach: scop are tricky little devils. So in the fall, it's really hard to get a concentration of scop somewhere, so they're kind of just spread out all over the place. That's something that we are still kind of confused on, on what they're doing. And so the highest concentration of birds that we can get in one place in terms of lesser scop is during spring migration and is this specific location. Otherwise, we just can't really get our hands on scop.
Mike Brasher: And a large enough sample is important from a banding perspective is important because it allows us to generate precise estimates and kind of accurate estimates also of the survival rates, the harvest rates that we're interested in, right? You've got to have some minimum sample size to enable some minimum number of recoveries and all that stuff. It's the precision of your estimate. So, yeah, this is a little bit different. But it's really important work. It's an important species. It's one that we're concerned about and have been for a number of years. And this has proven to be a vital contribution to our understanding of what all is going on with our population and informing that. and informing our new research also. That's sort of the other connection with your work. You're here, your research depends on capturing birds, right? But it also is, it's relevant to sort of the timing of when they're coming through here in this particular location. because of one of the hypotheses that were in play to explain the decline in scalp populations, that being the spring condition hypothesis, right? And so that's your master's research kind of gets us into that area, got us into, well, was related to that hypothesis. There have been some other folks come along before you to try to evaluate that. They found a few things. You can find something, let's say a difference in body weight or body mass between one group of birds and the next group of birds or from one location to the other location or from one time of the year to another time of the year, and you can say, okay, we have this difference, right? But you don't know the mechanism that would explain that difference and whether there's any kind of management intervention that we could take. And that's where some of your research comes into play. All of your research comes into play. I mean, that's it.
Cheyenne Beach: A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm definitely trying to put like puzzle pieces together in order for managers to be able to actually do something. Because right now we're all just like, I don't know what to do. Please tell me what to do.
Mike Brasher: Let's figure out what is causing that thing that we're observing.
Cheyenne Beach: For sure. So I'll shout out Connor England. So Connor had kind of done like some precursor stuff to my master's work and they had, during spring migration, lethally collected scop, like I said, during spring migration, from like the Lower, upper Mississippi River, so like Southern Illinois up to Minnesota, and we're following birds throughout spring migration and collecting birds as they moved north. And they were looking at the parasite composition of the intestines of these birds. specifically targeting Lester's scop and kind of trying to figure out when the community changes in terms of that intestinal parasite community and really seeing if it lines up with what we know of where the fossil snail is. Spoiler alert, the fossil snail's involved with this. That's a non-native aquatic invert that houses these parasites. and started seeing that and also comparing their body condition too and what they're seeing in terms of physiological response. So they like took blood samples and they also evaluated their intestines and kind of seeing what type of damage is happening, especially if these birds look healthy, but then we open them up and we see like, oh my gosh, there's a bunch of hemorrhaging in their intestines or They're having a crazy immune response, but everything looked like they were fine. They flew away fine. And so that was kind of Connor's work. They wanted to wrap their heads around what is happening with the scop and the parasites, especially in a seemingly healthy bird. And so that was a precursor to my master stuff. And then they recommended doing some captive infection trials of like, okay, something's happening, these sublethal infections. We do see damage happening here and we think it's affecting body condition, but we need a controlled environment to experiment on that. That's where my master's came into play. We're going to call time out right there. We're going to take a break.
Mike Brasher: That's a great place to pause. We've got a lot more to discuss, your summary of your master's research. Then we'll move on to your PhD research. Jack, I want to come back as we get to close out this. and talk about some of your experiences here. Some of the banding statistics, you know, how many do we catch here in a given year? What have been some of the more interesting birds that you've caught? What kind of hybrids do you catch? I know you've seen some of those. And so I want to close out with that discussion. But right now we're going to take a break and then we'll be right back. So stay with us, everyone. Hey everyone, welcome back. We're here with Cheyenne Beach, PhD candidate at Northern Illinois University and her research assistant, Jack Johnson. And we're going to pick up right where we left off with Cheyenne about to launch into a summary of her of her master's research and and so I guess I'll ask that we let's try to keep this brief because because if I if I'm not careful I'll start and you can kind of you can pull me out of the ditch as well we'll we'll go on for longer than than what we need to you're here so if you want to know all the nitty-gritty of Cheyenne's master's research go back to that episode 140.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, go back to that episode, you can call me.
Mike Brasher: So you've kind of laid the background for needing to do some controlled experimentation to evaluate the sublethal effects of these different trematodes. So that became your research for your master's. You were successful at that. Tell us what you found.
Cheyenne Beach: Absolutely. I hope I was successful. Oh no, I know I was. Yeah. So we did sublethal infections. So out in the wild, what Connor's research found was that these birds can have thousands of trematodes in their system and still look healthy. We didn't want to infect with that many at one time. We wanted to go real, real sublethal. So we only infected with a couple hundred trematodes. and we evaluated every single response that we could. And essentially what we found is that even at sublethal levels, body condition is significantly reduced. So this is a short time period. It's just a 10-day infection period, and that's how long the trematodes are alive for in the intestines of the birds. So this is a short cycle. And even at sublethal levels, we're seeing a significant response. So it is taking a toll on these birds, even when we have very little trematodes in the system. So that was a big red flag for us of that. Okay. Even if they eat like a couple snails, that could still impact them down the road. And that kind of leads into my master's work. Sorry, my PhD work.
Mike Brasher: I do want to ask you a question about that. So the life cycle you said is what, 10 days? 10 to 14 days, something like that?
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, it's like 10 to 14 days give or take individual parasites. But yeah, we're talking about a very short life cycle.
Mike Brasher: So they lost body mass during that time period. How much recovery did you see like after that 10 to 14 day period?
Cheyenne Beach: That's a good question. We didn't really let the birds go into any sort of recovery period. However, past experimental trials with these trematodes infecting other species of waterfowl, they did let them recover and those ran for up to 20, 30 days. Then they would still see some level of impact in terms of seeing some scabbing in the intestines, but overall the birds seemed to recover. Our birds, we just wanted to know the response throughout time during that 10-day window. So, we didn't let them recover, but I'm sure that the birds could have. How long?
Mike Brasher: I don't know. And if you get a higher dose, then there's likely to be more impact, more difficult for them to recover. And you even talked about mortality that's being seen in scamp and coots as well, right? In some areas up there where the faucet snails are. Yeah, so that's sort of the… there's I guess a couple of different ways in which the snails and I guess the trematodes acquired through the snails could be of concern with respect to population change and declines in scot populations. One is through mortality, right? But the other is through maybe impairment of reproduction once they get up to… or they prevent them from reproducing. be in good enough body condition, right? Absolutely. And so that's where your PhD comes into play because you're wanting to track these birds down here. You can't… it's not enough to just go to the… like if you try to do a study on the breeding grounds, you can't… easily tell if a bird that you see has nested, right? Totally. Unless you find it on the nest, but then that's just a bird that's on the nest. You don't know about birds that are non-breeders, that chose to not breed. They're very difficult to study. Right. Am I right? Totally. But in order to do that, one of the other things that you had to figure out is sort of whether the technology that you were going to that would have been needed to study this question, marking birds here, tracking them to the breeding grounds, whether the birds would tolerate this technology, these tracking devices. Was that part of your master's degree also? That was just separate or is that part of your PhD started way back then?
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah. Okay, I guess I didn't realize that. Oh my gosh, this is a long time ago.
Mike Brasher: So in October of 2020 had you finished your master's whenever we did that?
Cheyenne Beach: No, I finished my master's in April 2021. Okay, so you had been really close. Yeah, I started my PhD in the fall of 2021.
Mike Brasher: Okay, that's a good little milestone, time stamp to put there.
Cheyenne Beach: It is. And we had, Ariel and I had started to develop a proposal for the project Oh my gosh, I think it was the fall of 2020. So I was still a master's student, but starting to develop the PhD work so that we could ask for funding to then start the PhD in 2021.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, so then I'm just realizing I probably stole a little bit of your thunder about the importance of what you're trying to tackle with your PhD. So go for it. Pick up with where I kind of gave that general introduction. high-level overview of the questions you're trying to answer and how you're going about it and why doing so here is important.
Cheyenne Beach: Totally. Yeah. So the biggest thing for my master's was seeing that body condition was greatly reduced even at sublethal levels for these parasites. And we're talking about like body fat percentages, you know, different nutrient levels, all across the board, body condition was reduced. That sent up red flags to us that It is likely because of when they're encountering these parasites. It's during the last leg of their spring migration. That sent flags to us that it's likely if these birds are encountering these trematodes and becoming infected, that their body condition is being reduced and their subsequent migration efforts and breeding efforts might be negatively impacted. And that plays into the spring condition hypothesis, which essentially states that reduced food availability during spring migration is causing birds to have reduced body condition, which would negatively impact their breeding capabilities.
Mike Brasher: And this would be a slight twist on that hypothesis because it's not necessarily related to decreased food availability, but it's more food quality issue if you wanted to look at the infections that they would get from encountering certain types of foods, faucets, snails in this case. Still, body condition being this sort of intermediate demographic rate or effect that it would have and then carry over into the ultimate demographic rates of survival or reproduction.
Cheyenne Beach: For sure. And so that's where the PhD works comes into play. So we essentially wanted to track birds. throughout spring migration and figure out what's the difference between birds that have a really high likelihood of encountering these parasites and birds that have a really low likelihood of encountering these parasites. And that's based off from geographics. We kind of know where the faucet snail exists and we kind of know where it doesn't exist. And then the intermediate zone of like, maybe it exists there, but maybe it doesn't, we're going to try to figure out if it exists there or not. That's part of my PhD research as well. And so we're putting transmitters out on birds on pool 19, one, because it's a great place to catch birds. We have a longstanding banding operation here, and so we know we can catch birds here. But also it is a few pools south of where the Fossil Snail currently has its range. And so the Fossil Snail is in the biggest densities in pool 13 of the Mississippi River, which is in Northern Illinois. And so it hasn't reached pool 19 yet. So we still got some time to figure some stuff out, but we're putting transmitters out here so the birds can recover from their surgeries. We have to surgically implant these transmitters. And so we put them out here so they can have a little bit of time to recover and then continue with their migration and breeding efforts.
Mike Brasher: So the implant transmitters are different from what a lot of people will be familiar with. I don't know if I'd say most, I guess it is fair to say most of the tracking device studies that people would have seen or heard about, at least at our our audience would have seen or heard about are using backpack transmitters, mallards, external backpack tracking devices. Diving ducks, because they have to feed underwater, do not take as well to those backpack units. That's what a fair bit of research has shown, right?
Cheyenne Beach: Totally. They don't like having something outside of their body. We think it might have to do with the waterproofing of their feathers, or maybe it's the aerodynamic, or water dynamics? Hydrodynamics? Hydrodynamics. We can go with that. Of their body moving underwater. We're not quite sure, but baseline, they don't like it.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, and these implant transmitters, they require a surgical procedure, very sterile procedure conducted by trained veterinarians, professional veterinarians. This one, the doctor, the veterinarian that you have here, I was speaking with him yesterday and he said he's approaching 800th surgery for this purpose. He's worked on emperor geese, he's worked on harlequin ducks, long-tailed ducks, a lot of other species of sea ducks. He's done a lot of work in Alaska, but not restricted to diving ducks also. He's been doing some work on I think pintails, maybe mallards here in recent past. So, there are some folks that that do prefer the implant transmitters for the studies that they're conducting. The downside to the implant transmitters, these do have an external antenna, which is one of the craziest things that a lot of people will… the craziest realization that people will have whenever you start telling them this, it's like, wait, the antenna comes through the body? Yes, it does. And so, again, that's why the entire… The surgical procedure itself is why it has to be done by a professional and sterile environment and so forth, but the antenna is external to enable that signal, right? But the drawback is what? What's the biggest drawback?
Cheyenne Beach: Battery life. Oh my gosh. We can't have enough battery life. We wish we could, but we can't. So depending on how much data we're taking, it depends on how long the battery is going to last for, but we can make them last for nine to 10 months.
Mike Brasher: And do these have the accelerometer sensor inside as well? How is all that important in the data that you're trying to collect to evaluate the questions?
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, they do have accelerometer capabilities, but for us, we decided not to go with accelerometers this time around. We really, really wanted to, but we decided to go with just GPS locations and then using the temperature sensors as well in the units to understand if we have mortalities or not. But yes, we wish that we could use accelerometers. It just takes so much data right now that we can't use them.
Mike Brasher: I don't want to get too far down into the details of your research. We'll have you back once you finish up. We'll discuss your results. Anything else that we want to discuss here with regard to your research? This is the second year?
Cheyenne Beach: This is my first year of putting transmitters out. So we're putting out 50 transmitters this year. We'll put out 50 transmitters next year and then I should be wrapping up in 2026. Currently we have 11 out right now. Yeah, we have 11 hours right now.
Mike Brasher: Time stamp it. One of the things I wanted to mention was that as part of one of the earlier parts of your PhD was evaluating the transmitter, the unit.
Cheyenne Beach: Transmitter effect, yeah. Yes, before we were able to go ahead and keep going with the project and putting transmitters in wild birds, we wanted to make sure that these birds were going to nest with their transmitters. And so I was down at Panola Aviary in Louisiana It's a private aviary and they so, so, so graciously let me utilize their flock of captive lesser scop. And I implanted 10 transmitters into some of their breeding birds and some of their birds that had hatched the previous year, but we weren't quite sure if they were going to breed or not. And we did that just because we only had a limited number of birds too. And so we implanted transmitters in February of 2022. And then I watched them for a couple of months after that to see how they were adapting to their transmitters. I watched for their behaviors, trying to see if they were preening more or less, if they have transmitters in or not. We also had a control group that didn't have any transmitters in. And so, yeah, I just watched them. And then in April, they started to lay eggs, which was so exciting because that's exactly what we wanted to be there for. And then I left at the end of May. And so what we found was we didn't have a significant difference in behavior between our transmitter and control group. And in terms of nesting, the transmitter birds laid eggs just like the control group did. And then the aviary incubates a lot of their eggs artificially and they incubated eggs for us. They hatched in captivity, all good, felt really good about it. And so we wanted, because we're looking at this physiological phenomenon, we really wanted to make sure that the transmitters weren't going to have an effect that wasn't tolerable for our question. But we feel as though we have a tolerable amount of transmitter effects.
Mike Brasher: Did I tell you that… So, our audience should be familiar with Panola Aviary. We had an episode with Paul Dixon, Jacob Kramer there a year ago, I guess it would have been. But time gets away from me on these things. But we saw the birds. We saw your birds that were there. So, I think I was there in October of 22. Your birds were there then. We went back last spring. spring of 23 to do the episode with Paul and Jacob. And that was, we saw the birds there again, still swimming around, looking just as happy as all the others. And Paul again remarked, he's like, you know, we're really not sure what we're going to do with these. If we want to, if it's worth removing the units and or just kind of let them continue to do their thing there. So, last time I knew they still had the units in them. Still, we're fine, which is really cool. You know, the idea of the antenna being external, kind of going through the sidewall of the body. There's a little mesh collar on the inside, which is secured to the antenna and then, of course, the skin, scar tissue forms and encapsulates it and all that type of stuff. So it's a remarkable procedure to see done to realize the lengths that we go to get reliable data to study these birds. I mean that's what it's about is making sure the data you're getting is reliable for the question that you want to answer.
Cheyenne Beach: That's huge. Yeah. If we don't… I've been talking about transmitter effect quite a bit in the last couple of months, but if we don't have a good idea of what kind of effect we're seeing or that we might expect to see, and of course we're biased, we're human, we don't exactly know what's happening to these birds all the time. We can only do so much in captivity because those birds don't act like wild birds. And so it's hard to evaluate transmitter effect. But we also have to try to evaluate transmitter effect to make sure that we're accounting for all the things and that we're getting quality data back. Because if we don't, what's the point? Exactly.
Mike Brasher: Exactly. Cheyenne, we will leave it there with your research right now and we'll be back in touch I don't know, a couple years down the road, we'll get the rundown on what you found. You'll be a three-timer, three steps along the way, and so we look forward to that. Jack, I want to come to you right now and have you talk about the banding activities, the banding operation, how it works, what time you get here, what you look for, how are we catching these birds, give people sort of a mental image of how all this works.
Jack Johnson: So this year, Cheyenne and I got out to the pool the day after the Super Bowl, February 12th, I think, and a few days.
Mike Brasher: So the day after the Super Bowl in just, well, so you were in Illinois, but if you'd gone to the Keokuk, Iowa side, you know, I'm sure it would have been a very happy population. I don't know, like here on the Illinois side, if there's a lot of Chiefs fans, but I know in Keokuk there's a lot of Chiefs fans. Everybody may have had a hangover. You may have been the only person alive.
Jack Johnson: Yeah, I was the only one sober that day. I was the only one in the river and the only one sober. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, so we got out here the day after the Super Bowl, February 12th, and a large portion of that first week is scouting, figuring out what birds we have on the pool at that time. I actually come out to the pool a week earlier, and I had set out a few bait sites, and that just consists of a large piece of conduit where we put down into the substrate, and then we pile corn around that. And then we monitor that over, I don't know, three weeks, as long as it takes. And eventually, once we have birds surrounding that bait site after we've continued to bait it, we will introduce a trap. And that trap gets introduced, I don't know, 10, 20, 30 feet away. And we incrementally move that closer as the birds get used to it. I didn't know that. That's really cool.
Mike Brasher: So, if you put it right on the bait pile, they'll spook.
Jack Johnson: Right. And you might get a few to stay by, but the large majority of the birds will push off if you introduce that trap too quickly.
Mike Brasher: Do they eventually imprint on that trap and recognize it as a source of food because of what we saw yesterday?
Jack Johnson: I've wondered that a lot. I've wondered it a lot. I'm not sure. If doing it at the beginning of the season would be the best idea, maybe to the end, we could just introduce a straight trap and we could kind of see if they gotten used to it or are comfortable with it immediately. But in the beginning, we try to be gentle with it, be cautious and move it in slow. And eventually, the traps that we're using is long pieces of wire that we bend into a circle or a kind of a heart shape. with a funnel on one side and a door on the other. And these are diving ducks that we're catching, so these birds are going underneath the water. We zip tie it down, birds dive under in the funnel, come up in the trap, and that's how we catch those. And we can catch up to a couple hundred in a trap, or we can catch, you know, a few.
Mike Brasher: So… What's the most that you've caught in one trap?
Jack Johnson: that I've been a part of this we had some pretty good numbers over in the IRV on Chautauqua yep on Chautauqua we've gone over there a few times and got a couple hundred in those but here I think in one singular trap I'd be willing to say it's maybe 80 to 100 That's still a lot of birds. How many crates?
Mike Brasher: How many? Oh, four or five at least. And that's pretty, it'd be pretty packed in those crates.
Cheyenne Beach: Oh yeah, very much, yes.
Mike Brasher: All right, so go get baited, swim in traps is what we have.
Jack Johnson: How many, what else in terms of the… Yeah, so the banding operation itself is largely volunteer based. We have a lot of volunteers that move through here from all over the place and I can firmly say that that is one of my favorite parts of working here, especially for the consecutive Second year now, I have met tons of cool people that are willing to get out in the water with us, help us net these birds, help us bring them back to shore, help us through the banding process. It's been a pleasure to meet so many folks, so many cool folks with a lot of interesting backgrounds.
Cheyenne Beach: And I see a lot of people like this is their first time ever being around a duck before. It's their first time seeing a duck. It's the first time being at the Mississippi River. So seeing them every, like you get a new person every day that has never seen a duck before up close.
Jack Johnson: Seeing reactions is really something special.
Mike Brasher: That's crazy. And you do have, I understand that's probably the favorite part of it, introducing other people to the thing that you love and that gets you so excited. But you have people coming in on a daily basis, rotating in and out on a daily basis. We've been here for three days. We're leaving tomorrow. But you've had some people just show up for a day. You've had some students from a university yesterday, I guess, show up for just a day. you have a dorm here where people can stay and it's a nice facility here and it's a perfect little spot with the I guess the amenities that you need. It's not luxurious but it doesn't need to be. It's nice for a field camp or for an education center. It's the Alice Kibbe
Cheyenne Beach: Alice L. Kibbe Scientific Research Center, or something like that.
Mike Brasher: Alice Kibbe Science Center, we'll call it that here in Warsaw, Illinois, and it is a great asset for this project.
Cheyenne Beach: owned by Western Illinois University, but yeah, they allow us to utilize the space, which we are incredibly grateful for, because we wouldn't be able to do what we do with the volunteer base that we have without this research center.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, because we didn't have to pay anything for lodging and that is… There are so many people that you would not be able to get out to help if they had to stay at a hotel or something in that nature. Logistics on that would have been, would be much more difficult as well. But yeah, welcoming people in here and on such a rotational basis that's, I would imagine there are, that not everyone is cut out for managing those types of volunteers on a daily basis. Some folks just want to get their work done and don't have to worry about having to manage people. I mean, you're giving instructions, the same instructions and guidance every day. And there's three or four different times during a day that you're giving these instructions and you do it every day. But it's necessary because this is a scientific study, scientific data being collected and needs to be done consistently. And of course, the care of the birds is top priority. And for the care of the volunteers as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, because it is, that's one of the things I had no preconceived idea of what I was getting into and where the traps were going to be, how far from shore we're going to have to boat to them and we didn't, we walked to them. Had no idea what the substrate was going to be, silty in a few places, but then once you get out there, it's firm sand. And, but then depending on the the wind and waves, it can be a bit of a different environment from day to day. Yesterday and the day before were windier and it got a little, got a little wetter, but it's all good. It's fun. So this year, well, let me ask this first, this question first. What is the, do you have a target number for banded scop?
Jack Johnson: So, in the Illinois River Valley, the quota per se is 1,000 birds for lesser scop, and then over here, we look for about 3,000. And over the last few years, I believe since 2020, Cheyenne kind of mentioned low water years versus high water years. Since 2020, we've had some low water years, so we've struggled with trapping. To reiterate kind of that, the low water years, more sunlight gets into the pool, the veg grows, so exponential amount of food for those birds to get on it. And that, along with the warm weather, we've had some struggles. Birds just aren't, they don't have that hard drive to get after corn. So we've been a little low, but right now we're looking at around 1,200, just over 1,200 birds so far banded, 11 transmitters, 10, 11 transmitters.
Mike Brasher: And so you can't put transmitters in every female scalp that you capture. There's a weight threshold, right?
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah. The birds need to weigh more than what is going to be 5% of their body weight. I don't know how I could say it more confusing, but we're only putting a transmitter in a bird if the bird weighs enough that the transmitter only is 5% of their body weight. And so for us, our cutoff for that is 600 grams.
Jack Johnson: 600 would be the higher side and then a higher percentage. And 3% would be 700, 4% would be 650.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, so we're in that 600 to 700 gram range. We do catch birds, we caught a couple birds today that were below that 600 gram range and so they weren't able to put a transmitter in them. But the 11 thus far, they've been around like the 650 to 700 range actually.
Jack Johnson: We've got a couple that were larger as well.
Mike Brasher: You've caught a lot of canvas backs or you've caught so many canvas backs that you ran out of size 7 bands. So, no more canvas backs being banded this year. Very sad about it. And redheads, caught a lot of redheads as well. Do they take a size 7 as well?
Jack Johnson: Banders choice. It's subjective depending on how large that ring, or excuse me, how large that redhead is. If it's a female, you're going to be looking at somewhere below a thousand grams, maybe just over. And you can kind of size a size six band to her leg, but most of the time we're going to be putting sevens on those birds as well. So any more redheads being banded?
Mike Brasher: Most likely no. Most likely not. Yeah, okay.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah. Trying to reserve those bands for Scott.
Mike Brasher: Yeah. Well, we got here just in time to see some of the last Canvas backs to be banded this year and Redheads as well. And you've caught, that's an abnormally large number of Canvas backs this year, right? Any idea what's going on there?
Jack Johnson: So last year, I know we, I want to say we banded between, I want to say around 300 or so canvas backs last year, and we've already surpassed that and we're still going. And we're, like you've seen for the past two days, we've been catching canvas backs, a lot of them. Um, but yeah, we ran out of those size sevens and I know Forbes biological station is looking to get some more. We'll be restocked for next year. Okay.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah. But also we started trapping fairly early this year. This is the earliest I think ever that we've started trapping. And so migration chronology The canvas backs should be moving through first, yes, and then scop moving through. But this year when we came over and we started trapping, actually when Jack came over the week before the Super Bowl to put out some bait sites, that was all because we saw scop. And we didn't just see scop, we saw female scop too, which is unusual. We don't usually see them until
Jack Johnson: March. Just for a comparison, last year we spent a good number of weeks just sitting over here watching, waiting for scop to show up on the pool. And this year was a complete turnaround where we got to the pool way earlier than we thought we should have and we already had scop on the pool. It kind of goes to show what how much, or excuse me, how weird this spring really was in terms of weather.
Cheyenne Beach: And so trying to get on those few scop that were here, especially those females, we put out bait sites immediately. So it's probably an artifact of the fact that we started banding so early and trying to get those scop. But also it was a weird fall slash winter. Pool 19 usually closes in terms of ice cover throughout December and definitely throughout January and the pool usually opens somewhere in mid-February, but we only froze during, there was that one week in January where we had the polar vortex. That's the only time the pool closed. Other than that, it's been open.
Mike Brasher: Just another sign of how warm this year was and how it affected waterfowl and places they could go and the places they could stay.
Cheyenne Beach: I mean, it was a banner year for hunting on Pool 19 this fall. Yeah, they shot a lot, a lot of birds, which is awesome, but also those birds never really left here.
Mike Brasher: Quick question. I was noticing, and I did not ask you this when we were banding, but the bands looked a little different. Are they inkaloid bands or some other, some type of different type of metal?
Jack Johnson: Yes. So we're banding with size six and size seven inkaloids, and that's due to these birds, these specific species are going to be in saltwater a lot more and they hold up. These type of bands hold up a lot better. Otherwise, if you put in a regular aluminum band on these guys, it'd eventually wear down and fall off.
Mike Brasher: Yeah. I thought that was what I was seeing, but I don't band a lot of ducks. Most of the ones that I do are dabbling ducks, but I've been associated with some research on band wear and been to some of the Flyaway Tech Committee meetings where they've talked about some of that. I believe there's some other species where they recommend the use of inkloy bands. But yeah. Okay. Well, good. I'm glad to learn that I was correct in what I was assuming there. Let's talk real quickly, then we'll close this out, about some of the more interesting birds that you've captured this year. We had one just yesterday, but what others before that are noteworthy?
Jack Johnson: So, I'll talk about four really quickly. Two are the same. So, last year we had two hybrids caught. We generally get a few hybrids here every year, as well as the banding crew over in Havana. Last year we caught a red-headed or a redhead and lesser scop hybrid. And that bird was interesting. Don't quote me on the years. I think it's around six to eight years ago, it was caught by the master bander over in Havana, Josh Osborne, and it was not recognized as a hybrid at the time. It was caught and banded at that time. Yes. And it was not recognized as a hybrid at the time. Over here, that bird throughout its life cycle started to show those characteristics of a hybrid. And that's when we caught six, eight years later. So that's a pretty cool one. Last year we also had a redhead canvasback hybrid. And this year we got a very similar looking bird. So another redhead canvasback hybrid. And then just yesterday you got to see a ringneck scop hybrid. Very cool duck.
Mike Brasher: That one was interesting because I was, I think you and I were working on the same crate You pulled that bird out, I think, or maybe I pulled it out and handed it to you, and you immediately said, scop. But I was, and you were looking at the back of it. I was looking at the back and the side pocket. I was looking at the front of it and on the bill, it was screamed ring neck duck for me. And so I said, wait, what did you call that bird? I'm thinking, this is your technician.
Cheyenne Beach: Shut up. Oh my God. He's going to hire. This is a scop project.
Mike Brasher: He's calling a ring neck a scop. And so then he looked at me like I was crazy. And so I'm like, well, wait, what did I do wrong? examining the bird a little more closely and we're like, yeah, this is interesting. It had tertials of a ring-necked duck, it lacked the white at the base of the bill, it had the white on the tip of the bill, but it lacked the rust ring around the neck.
Jack Johnson: not ring around the neck. You also had mentioned the side profile of the head yesterday. It really screamed ring neck, but it had a really green, scop-colored head, and the above the column there was just showing through white, like you can see the scop and the ring neck.
Mike Brasher: Had some vermiculation on the, some white vermiculation on the back, characteristic of a scop, and so you sent some photos of that bird to a few people, and they told us what?
Jack Johnson: Confirmed.
Mike Brasher: It is a ringneck scop hybrid. So that was cool to see and experience and kind of be part of that discovery. And we found ourselves today looking at a bird that's like, that looks a little bit different.
Cheyenne Beach: Let me take a second look.
Mike Brasher: No, maybe that's just a scop. This has been a fun experience for me, the three days that I've had here. The episode here today has been another learning experience for me and great to reconnect with you on to learn and have our listeners learn about some of the results from your earlier research and what you're continuing on to do now. You know it's just a constant reminder, we're studying, thinking about this study, looking at parasites and their effects on body conditions, sublethal effects and trying to figure out how we measure that. across a broad geography that these birds traverse. And the fact that we are digging into the details of these things that are happening to the degree that we are is just another testament to the amount of interest and energy and concern and love there is for this resource and continue to do it and you two are the next in line of sort of the next generation of waterfowl professionals that will carry this on and I was there not doing a podcast 20 years ago but I was in your position as one of the up-and-coming you know one of the younger waterfowl scientists and now I feel like I'm getting old but I'm still learning and it's fun every day and especially when I get to spend days with folks like y'all. So thanks, this is always really cool.
Cheyenne Beach: Thank you for being here.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, any final remarks? Oh, one thing I do want to, and we'll come back to any final remarks, partners and supporters for your research.
Cheyenne Beach: Oh my gosh, thank you for saying that because I have so many. So the biggest shout out is to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources through the federal aid and wildlife restoration funds. They funded my master's research and the majority of my PhD research. So like, thank you guys so much. You are amazing. Otherwise, DU, DU has been a huge supporter of my research. They supported my master's research and they also have been supporting my PhD research. So thank you guys for doing that. I love you. And then I've got several partners within the flyway. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and a little bit of Missouri have been helpful in supplying in-kind support for my project. I think that's all the people.
Mike Brasher: Other folks, local volunteers, folks? Oh my gosh, all the people.
Jack Johnson: I'd like to make a couple of thank yous. I'm sure Cheyenne can back me up on all the volunteers who have participated last year and this year in our banding efforts and future volunteers. This is also going out to the listeners. If you guys would like to come out to Pool 19 and help band with us, contact Cheyenne or I. Get in terms of when we're scheduling for the 2025 season. Come on out and help us band. And I also would like to thank the local people that let us use their properties in crucial areas. I don't know if I'll name names. Okay. All right.
Mike Brasher: Just be careful that you don't forget someone. I've made that mistake a ton of times.
Cheyenne Beach: I know. It's such a problem.
Jack Johnson: Doc Leonard is a- Doc Leonard is huge. Ronald. Ronald Doc Leonard is a huge, huge, crucial part of this banding operation. His house sits in a very central location where we band a lot of birds each year. And he has a very nice pool barn shed that he uses for decoy carving as well. But he lets us have that for these months of the year and we band a lot of birds in there and he's very gracious. We've got that down to a science. So, I'd like to thank him a lot.
Mike Brasher: You know he likes it. You know he's supportive when he allows you to do that. In his beautiful shed.
Jack Johnson: And he started with that from the early 2000s when Al started this banding operation.
Cheyenne Beach: So, Al came out and asked him. He saw this huge raft of birds in front of his house and was like, hey, can I access the river through your property? And from then on, Doc has been just as much of the banding operation as the banding operation is. So, huge shout out to Doc. We love you. And Janet. Janet is Doc's wife.
Jack Johnson: And to everyone at Havana for helping us out when we need.
Cheyenne Beach: Yeah, of course. Everyone at Forbes Biological Station, we love you guys so much. You are so helpful. You are amazing. And Dave and Diane Luddington. We didn't really talk about them much, but Dave and Diane have helped us out so much. They're locals here. Dave is a local decoy carver and he is consistently always there for us.
Jack Johnson: Helping us out a lot with meals, laundry. That's awesome. Giving us the care we need while we're here.
Cheyenne Beach: Helping us band when we don't have people. All sorts of things.
Mike Brasher: The concern, the interest, the number of people that care about this resource is immense and they show it in many different ways. So many ways. So, Jack, with regard to your offer for people to get in touch with you, I guess what I would say is that if they're interested, they can send us an email through the Ducks Unlimited podcast. That's dupodcast.ducks.org. and then we can pass along your contact information. We'll get that from you. So, we'll go from there. So, yeah. Thank you, too. This has been so fun. Cheyenne Beach, Ph.D. candidate, Northern Illinois University. Jack Johnson, research technician, extraordinaire, scalp capturer, bander, extraordinary.
Cheyenne Beach: Looking for graduate positions. Especially on the East Coast. There you go.
Mike Brasher: And soon to move on to one of those positions. I'm confident. And glad to hear that you're going to continue to chase the waterfowl discipline. So, great to have you in here with us, fighting the fight. So, thanks, y'all. It's been wonderful. Thank you. A very special thanks to our guests on today's episode, Cheyenne Beach and Jack Johnson. We appreciate all that they brought to the conversation, appreciate all that they're doing for waterfowl, waterfowl science, and we look forward to following them along the way. As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great job he does in getting these episodes edited and out to you, and then to you, the listener, we thank you for your time. Thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation.