EDUCATION
Memoirs of a Migration
a Dozen StUDentS folloW WateRfoWl alonG theiR flYWaYS
By Jacob Straub and Rick Kaminski, Ph.D.
that waterfowl embark upon each spring,” he says.
“A trip like this has the potential to change students’ views of the world in which waterfowl live.”
Jacob Straub is a
doctoral student in
the Department of
Wildlife, Fisheries,
and Aquaculture at
Mississippi State
University.
Credit: Brandon Washington
Each year, flocks of ducks and other waterfowl migrate north along the Mississippi and Central flyways. Some birds touch down in
wetlands in Missouri, seek food along the Mississippi River in Illinois and Iowa, share space with
sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) in shallow playa
wetlands in Nebraska, and then spend spring and
summer producing young in the “prairie pothole”
region of the Dakotas. For students interested in
waterfowl and their wetland habitats, what better
way to learn more about them than by following
their migration paths?
Several students worked to generate most of the
funds for the trip by helping researchers from Ohio
State University collect avian flu virus samples from
hunter harvested waterfowl in Mississippi. What follows are highlights from their educational journey.
Rick Kaminski,
Ph.D., is Associate
Dean and Professor
in the Department of
Wildlife, Fisheries,
and Aquaculture
and the James C.
Kennedy Endowed
Chair in Waterfowl
and Wetlands
Conservation at
Mississippi State
University.
Credit: Brandon Washington
On May 4, 2009, 12 undergraduate and graduate
Mississippi State University (MSU) forestry and
wildlife students began a migration of their own.
Team Duck, as they are affectionately known, spent
nine days traversing nine states, visiting hotspots
for migrating and breeding waterfowl, and learning
how their wetland habitats are managed. Course
instructors Rick Kaminski and Mike Schummer of
the MSU Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and
Aquaculture developed and directed this “distance
learning” adventure. Additionally, gracious hosts—
mainly alumni of MSU’s wildlife program—led
discussions about their research and the habitats
they help conserve for birds, fish, and other wildlife.
Day 1. Roughly five hours after boarding a van
on MSU’s campus, Team Duck disembarked at
Ten Mile Pond, a Missouri Department of Wildlife
Conservation waterfowl management area. Leigh
Fredrickson, a University of Missouri professor
emeritus and renowned waterfowl and wetlands
ecologist, greeted the class. Fredrickson stressed
the importance of hands-on experience—not
just computer exercises—to understand wetland
geomorphology including the soil, geology, and
physiography of the land. Ten Mile Pond’s managers, Richard Haney and Rob Vinton, described the
key components of wetland management, including
the timing and duration of hydrologic events and
their effects on plant communities. Sometimes this
management must be active, such as soil disturbance by disking, which sets back plant succession
and promotes seed-producing annual plants.
For the students, the trip was part of a spring
course titled “Spring Wildlife Migrational Ecology and Conservation.” Its goal was to supplement
classroom teachings of fall semester courses in
wetland and waterfowl ecology and management
and to give students access to field experiences
that were diverse in type and geographical setting.
“Many students have not had an opportunity to get
hands-on experience in habitats used by waterfowl
outside of Mississippi,” says Alicia Wiseman, a
former graduate student who participated in the
course and now is a biologist for Ducks Unlimited
in Louisiana.
Day 2. Onward and northward, the students
traveled from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the
Illinois River Valley. There they heard from MSU
alumnus Joshua Stafford, now research director
of the Illinois Natural History Survey’s Frank C.
Bellrose Waterfowl Research Center. Stafford gave
the group a tour of Chautauqua National Wildlife
Refuge while sharing the geologic, waterfowl, and
human histories of the area. He also described his
lab’s current research, which involves assessing
resources for waterfowl and shorebirds in local
wetlands and tracking waterfowl populations using
weather radar.
As an instructor, Schummer has seen how the
course-on-wheels changes student perspectives:
“Through views from the van window and hands-on
activities, we see the thousand-plus-mile journey
Stafford explained how dredging and channelizing
the Illinois River in the last 100 years have led to
declines in waterfowl, submersed aquatic vegeta-
