{"id":181797,"date":"2023-09-22T13:05:18","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T17:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=181797"},"modified":"2023-09-25T11:11:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:11:14","slug":"its-not-aliens-airboat-operation-out-of-sackville-works-under-cover-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/its-not-aliens-airboat-operation-out-of-sackville-works-under-cover-of-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s not aliens\u2019 — airboat operation works under cover of darkness banding birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019d never know it by passing down Main Street or walking through the Sackville Waterfowl Park, but nestled in between the two, just off Waterfowl Lane, is the regional office for the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS). That\u2019s where CHMA found Al Hanson and his crew one day last week, cleaning and prepping their airboat to head out on another round of bird banding in the marshy wetlands of the region. Hanson is head of the Aquatic Assessment Unit with CWS, and part of the group responsible for waterfowl management in Atlantic Canada.<\/p>\n

The airboat used by Hanson and his crew to get through thick marshland vegetation was built in Florida, and indeed looks like something you\u2019d see in an Everglades documentary, or an episode of Swamp People<\/a>. But Hanson is not after alligators, he\u2019s after birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe capture the bird, we put a band on it, and we identify the species, the sex, and the age, and then that goes into a an international database,\u201d says Hanson. \u201cThen when a hunter harvests that bird, they\u2019ll report the band. And so we get an idea of what we call direct recovery, which is the number of birds that are harvested in that first season. And then we also get information on long term survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of birds have been banded and tracked in the international database to which Hanson and his crew contribute, and the collected information is used to help set parameters around the hunting season. The crew also collects data on avian flu, giving a sample of unlucky birds a COVID-like swab to test for traces of the disease.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s good news on that front this year, says Hanson. \u201cLast year, there was mortality of common eiders and other species that were of concern, and then this year, we\u2019re thankful that even though a lot of the birds are showing that they have been exposed to avian influenza, there haven\u2019t been any mortalities. So that\u2019s good, from a wild bird perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s surprising how far the noise from an airboat can travel, says Al Hanson. Photo: Erica Butler<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The airboat banding operations does sometimes stir up local interest, mostly because of the noise. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising how far that noise will travel over open areas,\u201d says Hanson. \u201cWe\u2019ll be on a wetland four or five miles from someone\u2019s house, and they can hear it like we\u2019re in their backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The noise of the airboat coupled with the time of day of the excursions (during dark, new moon phase nights in August and September,) has attracted people to come find out what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to inform local communities and police that we\u2019re out with the airboat because it\u2019s a different noise that most people aren\u2019t accustomed to at night,\u201d says Hanson. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not aliens. It\u2019s not someone in a stolen vehicle or someone stuck in the marsh. It\u2019s us in the airboat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bird banding program based in Sackville can visit 12 to 15 different wetlands in about an hour\u2019s radius, says Hanson. Every year the airboat crew will tag hundreds of birds from Dorchester to Wallace, Nova Scotia to PEI. Operations happen in the two new moon periods after nesting season and before hunting season, and so will likely wrap up this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019d never know it by passing down Main Street or walking through the Sackville Waterfowl Park, but nestled in between the two, just off Waterfowl Lane, is the regional office for the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS). That\u2019s where CHMA found Al Hanson and his crew one day last week, cleaning and prepping their airboat to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":181807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,222],"tags":[30640,30386,3306,30641],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181797"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182183,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181797\/revisions\/182183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181797"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=181797"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=181797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}